Feb 9 : Written by 404EthanNotFound
3. Class Consciousness
Twenty days in. One thousand forty-nine days remain. The Trump administration has wasted no time at all in dismantling essential functions of the U.S. government. The volume of news emanating from the new administration is disturbing. Both corporate and independent media are struggling to keep pace as so much is constantly requiring our attention. Unfortunately, this is the point. It is mind-numbing listening to the destruction that the Trump administration is bringing to essential services of the government and the constant scandal that Trump and his compatriots bring forth. The phrase ‘there are decades where nothing happens and there are weeks where decades happen’ rings truer in my ears with every passing moment. With the overstimulation of current events, the working class in this country is divided and distracted, and in this way, becomes easier to maneuver and manipulate. I cannot do a breakdown of every single important event that has occurred in U.S. politics since my January 19th piece, but I can use this space to demonstrate how I ingest my news and how the concept of class struggle and class solidarity give me sharper insight into how and why the Trump administration is behaving this way.
The way I see it, there are two real classes in American society. In American society, an example of late-stage capitalism, the folks at the top are the capitalists, the owners, the managers. Words such as bourgeoisie or corporate class are employed in Marxist literature to denote those who control the ‘means of production’ or the methods of generating wealth. They are ‘the top one percent of the one percent, the ones in control, the ones who play god without permission’ (Mr. Robot. Created by Sam Esmail, USA Network, 2015-2019). This quote from the phenomenal Mr. Robot TV series is hyperbolic, as the capitalist class is made up of more people than just the top one percent of the one percent, but I feel it properly exemplifies the type of dynamic that I seek to describe. I will also add that there exists a sector of the population that, despite not belonging to this class, will fervently defend them. I view these folks as class traitors, but I do not write them off in the same way that I disregard any so-called good intentions of the corporate class. A class traitor would take a modicum of the wealth that the capitalist procures at the expense of the rest of the working class, aligning themselves with corporate interest over their own class interest. I view being a class traitor as selfish and counter-productive. I believe that a rising tide raises all ships and the moral position would be to act as a proponent of economic policies and workplace practices which promote power of the working class (unions, cooperatives, a strong National Labor Relations Board). The other class in American society in this struggle are the workers, those who produce money for the capitalists. The capitalist would not be able to produce wealth without the workers and the struggle of power lies herein.
This quote regarding the dynamic of the working class (proletariat) and the ruling class (bourgeoisie) is insightful to the overall mission of achieving class consciousness.
“As the bourgeoisie has the intellectual, organization and every other advantage, the superiority of the proletariat must lie exclusively in its ability to see society from the centre, as a coherent whole. This means that it is able to act in such a way as to change reality; in the class consciousness of the proletariat theory and practice coincide and so it can consciously throw the weight of its actions onto the scales of history – and this is the deciding factor” (Lukács, György. History and Class Consciousness : Studies in Marxist Dialectics. MIT Press, 1971. Pg 69.).
Now that we have a working definition of class, we can define class consciousness. Class consciousness in my opinion, is the ability of a group of similarly aligned peoples of economic status to identify the relationship between class (cultural imagined community), socioeconomic status (material status), and other members of this community.
Class consciousness can exist for both the working class and the ruling class. I seek to demonstrate how a strong class consciousness of the capitalist class already exists and it is the consciousness of the working class that needs to be bolstered.
What I want for this country is so reasonable in my opinion. I want moneyed interests out of politics. I want universal healthcare for all people in this country. I want to reduce the amount of money that is spent on the military and rather spend those resources promoting American soft power (see this breakdown from the Majority Report of Rep. Ilhan Omar discussing foreign interactions with the military vs. humanitarian efforts). I do not want a single person left behind in poverty in the richest nation in the world. I want to tax billionaires into extinction. These concepts are not radical, but the ruling class in this country would rather propagandize that these goals are unattainable. The existence of the uncontrolled moneyed interests (capitalists) in this country will always seek to siphon the maximum amount of wealth from the workers.
I do not condone violence. In fact, I find violence to be antithetical to the mission I have presented. This being said, I think the framing of an event like the shooting of United Healthcare CEO Brian Thompson is the epitome of what I am talking about. The violence that the capitalist class employs against the working class on a daily basis (denial of healthcare claims, depression of wages, pollution of the environment and expediting the climate crisis) is deemed as legal violence. This is the privatization of the gains (profits) and the socialization of the costs (harm to the working class). The way that the corporate class had amplified scenes of Luigi Mangione after his capture with scenes like the one below showcase how the law is applied unevenly.
The violence showcased by Mangione garners a response like this while the violence that the capitalists are allowed to perpetuate goes unanswered and will continue to do so, especially now that the Trump administration is dismantling the few safeguards against corporate overreach such as the National Labor Relations Board (where general counsel and one of the board’s members were recently illegally fired) and meddling in the Treasury. I state this to showcase an inherent consciousness in the corporate class, who will stop at nothing to accrue the maximum amount of wealth. This can only be combatted with an informed working class who is class conscious enough to act decisively to prevent the forces of greed from succeeding.
The lack of a unified message from the Democratic party is disheartening, but certainly not unexpected. Their callousness and refusal to identify the real reasons that they lost the 2024 presidential election simply demonstrates their lack of backbone and corporate capture. I think a part of my soul left my body when I heard Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer state how ‘aroused’ people in this country are. The feckless and rudderless leadership is going to hurt a lot of Americans as the Trump administration progresses largely uncontested in narrative.
Here are some of the ways that the people have taken the fight into their own hands. On February 5th, the 50501 grassroots movement held 50 protests in all 50 states in one day. Thousands of protestors congregated outside State Capitol buildings in order to speak out again the Trump administration, actions taken against Elon Musk, and Project 2025 as a whole (a Heritage Foundation roadmap for the second Trump presidency). A social media campaign targeted towards Federal workers has appeared with the slogan “Hold the line, don’t resign”. This campaign encourages federal workers to resist the buyout offer from the Trump administration which seeks to make the lives of these crucial workers so miserable that they take the severance package so the government can be further downsized and more loyalists can be installed. These workers need the support of all of us. If you know someone who works in an administrative role in the federal government (nearly 2% of the civilian workforce according to the U.S. Office of Personnel Management) see how they are faring and have a conversation with them. Finally, there are twelve days remaining in a Kickstarter for a graphic novel titled “F*CK BILLIONAIRES” which I would encourage everyone to look at. I think that this project will be incredibly informative in how the billionaires in this country manipulate and influence our political landscape and offer a similar feeling from the Mr. Robot TV series which I also recommend watching.
Thank you for reading and I hope I was able to provide some valuable resources for navigating the political landscape we find ourselves in. Next month, I aim to tackle foreign policy developments by the Trump administration and showcase how these events do not exist in a vacuum but are the perpetuation of Western Imperialism. Until then, Left is Best.