Hitherto, every form of society has been based, as we have already seen, on the antagonism of oppressing and oppressed classes. But in order to oppress a class, certain conditions must be assured to it under which it can, at least, continue its slavish existence. The serf, in the period of serfdom, raised himself to membership in the commune, just as the petty bourgeois, under the yoke of the feudal absolutism, managed to develop into a bourgeois. The modern labourer, on the contrary, instead of rising with the process of industry, sinks deeper and deeper below the conditions of existence of his own class. He becomes a pauper, and pauperism develops more rapidly than population and wealth. And here it becomes evident, that the bourgeoisie is unfit any longer to be the ruling class in society, and to impose its conditions of existence upon society as an over-riding law. It is unfit to rule because it is incompetent to assure an existence to its slave within his slavery, because it cannot help letting him sink into such a state, that it has to feed him, instead of being fed by him. Society can no longer live under this bourgeoisie, in other words, its existence is no longer compatible with society.

https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1848/communist-manifesto/ch01.htm#007

Capitalism does not work to the benefit of the vast majority of citizens. That is really the bottom line. The bourgeoisie are unfit to be the ruling class, because of the misery, hunger, crime, disease, imprisonment, illiteracy and lack of education of its citizenry. A citizenry that is enslaved to the ruling class, and are forced into prisons or left to die in the streets either of neglect or by active execution by bourgeois police forces. It isn't just a case of "I don't like bosses!" It is much, much more pervasive, integrated, developed, and simple.

If you want a good idea of what the bourgeois state is all about, read the Manifesto. It describes current conditions as they are now, as well as they were then - everything changes, some things change only a little...

In what relation do the Communists stand to the proletarians as a whole?

The Communists do not form a separate party opposed to the other working-class parties.

They have no interests separate and apart from those of the proletariat as a whole.

They do not set up any sectarian principles of their own, by which to shape and mold the proletarian movement.

The Communists are distinguished from the other working-class parties by this only: 1. In the national struggles of the proletarians of the different countries, they point out and bring to the front the common interests of the entire proletariat, independently of all nationality. 2. In the various stages of development which the struggle of the working class against the bourgeoisie has to pass through, they always and everywhere represent the interests of the movement as a whole.

https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1848/communist-manifesto/ch02.htm

These same statements could be made of the Bolsheviks.

It's starting to look a lot like..materialism

http://thefederalist.com/2016/12/30/epa-alaskans-sub-zero-temps-stop-burning-wood-keep-warm/

Remind you of anything?

http://thefederalist.com/2016/12/30/epa-alaskans-sub-zero-temps-stop-burning-wood-keep-warm/

Remind you of anything?

Don't think that article is a good example of ruling class overbearing, if that's what you're shooting for. Reason being that Alaska's main population, the area that EPA is addressing, is coastal, whereas this clown is caterwauling about the folks in the interior getting shafted. Ain't like Alaska doesn't have natural gas that could supply those relatively dense areas. Fuckin' Federalists...

If that's what your shooting for...

Don't think that article is a good example of ruling class overbearing, if that's what you're shooting for. Reason being that Alaska's main population, the area that EPA is addressing, is coastal, whereas this clown is caterwauling about the folks in the interior getting shafted. Ain't like Alaska doesn't have natural gas that could supply those relatively dense areas. Fuckin' Federalists...

If that's what your shooting for...

No.

Remember Marx in the Rhenish Gazette? Where he apologizes for the unseemly requirement to talk about..sustenance? You can almost see the wheels churning. What was the topic at hand? New Laws On The Theft Of Wood (ie gleaning).

PS Unfortunately, it appears that MIA was forced to take down their web conversions of some of issues of the Gazette by the people behind the MECW (Marx Engels Collected Works).

https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/download/Marx_Rheinishe_Zeitung.pdf

No.

Remember Marx in the Rhenish Gazette? Where he apologizes for the unseemly requirement to talk about..sustenance? You can almost see the wheels churning. What was the topic at hand? New Laws On The Theft Of Wood (ie gleaning).

PS Unfortunately, it appears that MIA was forced to take down their web conversions of some of issues of the Gazette by the people behind the MECW (Marx Engels Collected Works).

https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/download/Marx_Rheinishe_Zeitung.pdf

Don't remember in detail but got the gist of it. All I'm saying is that I don't think this an example of denial of sustenance as the EPA in this case is targeting 'densely' populated coastal regions not the 'interior' where this proposed ban would be very burdensome. Unless I'm reading it wrong that article was just some Federalist taking a cheap shot at EPA by confusing the issue.

Don't remember in detail but got the gist of it. All I'm saying is that I don't think this an example of denial of sustenance as the EPA in this case is targeting 'densely' populated coastal regions not the 'interior' where this proposed ban would be very burdensome. Unless I'm reading it wrong that article was just some Federalist taking a cheap shot at EPA by confusing the issue.

One thing, though, is the difference between corporate polluters and citizen polluters. It is fairly easy and not terribly effective, to go after private homes that pollute, while allowing corporate polluters to escape with what amounts to negligible penalties. I agree that this article is talking about burning wood in the woods as opposed to pollution in more heavily populated coastal areas, but that being said, is the basic idea of this piece wrong? I am serious, it is confusing to me.,

One thing, though, is the difference between corporate polluters and citizen polluters. It is fairly easy and not terribly effective, to go after private homes that pollute, while allowing corporate polluters to escape with what amounts to negligible penalties. I agree that this article is talking about burning wood in the woods as opposed to pollution in more heavily populated coastal areas, but that being said, is the basic idea of this piece wrong? I am serious, it is confusing to me.,

Same with almost all aspects of regulation, the 'legal violence' of the state. It's a free country, doncha know, how much freedom you got in your wallet?

I suppose that the most basic message here is that government oppresses people, which is of course it's main purpose. But as with questions of authority the questions are whose authority? Cui bono? And from this crowd the unspoken assumption is regulating Alaskans is same as regulating business

I'll let (young..ish) Marx tell you what he thinks of your responses BP:


in connection with the law concerning wood … should think only of wood and forest and should solve each material problem in a non-political way, i.e., without any connection with the whole of the reason and morality of the state.

Expanded quote (sorry that it isn't copy pasting well):


We repeat once again: our estates have fulfilled their function as such, but far be it from us todesire to justify them on that account. In them, the Rhinelander ought to have been victorious overthe estate, the human being ought to have been victorious over the forest owner. They themselvesare legally entrusted not only with the representation of particular interests but also with therepresentation of the interests of the province, and however contradictory these two tasks may be,in case of conflict there should not be a moment's delay in sacrificing representation of particularinterest to representation of the interests of the province. The sense of right and legality is the mostimportant provincial characteristic of the Rhinelander. But it goes without saying that a particularinterest, caring no more for the province than it does for the Fatherland, has also no concern forlocal spirit, any more than for the general spirit. In direct contradiction to those writers of fantasywho profess to find in the representation of private interests ideal romanticism, immeasurabledepths of feeling, and the most fruitful source of individual and specific forms of morality, suchrepresentation on the contrary abolishes all natural and spiritual distinctions by enthroning in theirstead the immoral, irrational and soulless abstraction of a particular material object and a particularconsciousness which is slavishly subordinated to this object.

Wood remains wood in Siberia as in France; forest owners remain forest owners in Kamchatka asin the Rhine Province. Hence, if wood and its owners as such make laws, these laws will differfrom one another only by the place of origin and the language in which they are written. Thisabject materialism, this sin against the holy spirit of the people and humanity, is an immediateconsequence of the doctrine which the Preussische Staats-Zeitung preaches to the legislator,namely, that in connection with the law concerning wood he should think only of wood and forestand should solve each material problem in a non-political way, i.e., without any connection withthe whole of the reason and morality of the state.

I'll let (young..ish) Marx tell you what he thinks of your responses BP:



Expanded quote (sorry that it isn't copy pasting well):

I don't see how this relates to the problem as there is no issue of ownership here. Where do you see " the representation of private interests ideal romanticism , immeasurable depths of feeling, and the most fruitful source of individual and specific forms of morality"? Because it is a booj state are all it's acts harmful to the working class? Who profits here?

That article is just an argument for deregulation of environmental law poorly disguised as advocating for the working class. Dunno why you picked that out of a thousand more viable examples.

Is this Russian nihilism or American petulance?

Let me start over.

A watershed moment for Marx comes when he (with an awkward "apology") pushes sustenance to the forefront. He says that the general interest is (rightly?!) placed above all particular interests..however, this does not stop at the particular interests of owners because in elevating the right of ownership in general, the right to sustenance and subsistence is NECESSARILY curtailed, denied, forcibly forfeited.

Marx further says that the state as the guarantor of the common interest cannot be considered apart from its *particular* role in this highly political process. Then, he explains that the entire matter is depoliticized by asserting a certain legal neutrality through a disavowal of the larger picture, allowing each individual question to be cast in purely technocratic terms. Eg,


Ain't like Alaska doesn't have natural gas that could supply those relatively dense areas.

Which leaves your riposte:


That article is just an argument for deregulation of environmental law poorly disguised as advocating for the working class. Dunno why you picked that out of a thousand more viable examples.

Criticism/critique is only helpful when it works to dispense with surface truth and get to the meaning beneath. Criticism to prove oneself a critic does the opposite. You say I should have chosen a better example (of what?) than the fact that even some idiot fucking federalists took to writing about the social order in terms of its impact of sustenance?

You read your Feuerbach? First thing he says is "you gotta eat".

The eschewal of ideas being placed above concrete needs, interests, struggles, and strivings..right? What's the word for that again?

Is this Russian nihilism or American petulance?

Let me start over.

A watershed moment for Marx comes when he (with an awkward "apology") pushes sustenance to the forefront. He says that the general interest is (rightly?!) placed above all particular interests..however, this does not stop at the particular interests of owners because in elevating the right of ownership in general, the right to sustenance and subsistence is NECESSARILY curtailed, denied, forcibly forfeited.

Marx further says that the state as the guarantor of the common interest cannot be considered apart from its *particular* role in this highly political process. Then, he explains that the entire matter is depoliticized by asserting a certain legal neutrality through a disavowal of the larger picture, allowing each individual question to be cast in purely technocratic terms. Eg,



Which leaves your riposte:



Criticism/critique is only helpful when it works to dispense with surface truth and get to the meaning beneath. Criticism to prove oneself a critic does the opposite. You say I should have chosen a better example (of what?) than the fact that even some idiot fucking federalists took to writing about the social order in terms of its impact of sustenance?

You read your Feuerbach? First thing he says is "you gotta eat".

The eschewal of ideas being placed above concrete needs, interests, struggles, and strivings..right? What's the word for that again?

Healthy, breathable air is not sustenance? It is a concrete need, though granted that heat in Alaska in winter does have more immediacy.

If I want to shoot squirrels in a suburban back yard with a 22(or shotgun) for dinner do firearm regulations place ideas above concrete needs? Sounds libertarian to me.

You read your Feuerbach? First thing he says is "you gotta eat".

In the case of fire wood vs natural gas - in the cities - you have two competing industries: the firewood industry and that of natural gas. Now firewood is, generally, less corporate than gas, unless you are talking about bundles of wood sold at Wal Mart. This probably has nothing to do with the issue, but every government program has an impact upon the underlying structure, positive or negative, for one or the other. In the case of this firewood thing, there may be a real question as to where the benefit lies, but the negative to poor folks seems obvious, unless the EPA makes exceptions for poor people. I know in the area where I live in North Alabama there is numerous, independent, pick-up and a chainsaw-kind of operations that live on firewood sales. As far as I know, there are no government troubles with folks burning or selling firewood down here.

Healthy, breathable air is not sustenance?

I don't know. Is the issue political or non-political? Which is it in, say, China?

In the case of fire wood vs natural gas - in the cities - you have two competing industries: the firewood industry and that of natural gas. Now firewood is, generally, less corporate than gas, unless you are talking about bundles of wood sold at Wal Mart. This probably has nothing to do with the issue, but every government program has an impact upon the underlying structure, positive or negative, for one or the other. In the case of this firewood thing, there may be a real question as to where the benefit lies, but the negative to poor folks seems obvious, unless the EPA makes exceptions for poor people. I know in the area where I live in North Alabama there is numerous, independent, pick-up and a chainsaw-kind of operations that live on firewood sales. As far as I know, there are no government troubles with folks burning or selling firewood down here.

The problem is in the relatively densely populated coastal areas and it's probably one of those deals where the local geology coupled with prevailing winds makes for areas of stagnant air, like the Los Angeles Basin.

Hell, I buy and burn firewood from those guys too, no problem.

In the case of fire wood vs natural gas - in the cities - you have two competing industries: the firewood industry and that of natural gas. Now firewood is, generally, less corporate than gas, unless you are talking about bundles of wood sold at Wal Mart. This probably has nothing to do with the issue, but every government program has an impact upon the underlying structure, positive or negative, for one or the other. In the case of this firewood thing, there may be a real question as to where the benefit lies, but the negative to poor folks seems obvious, unless the EPA makes exceptions for poor people. I know in the area where I live in North Alabama there is numerous, independent, pick-up and a chainsaw-kind of operations that live on firewood sales. As far as I know, there are no government troubles with folks burning or selling firewood down here.

I feel like you're about to dash off a letter to the editor of the Rheinische Zeitung weighing the pros and cons of gleaning and explaining that people will probably just get better at being stealthy about it and its not like its a federal crime -- its like a traffic citation, really.

I don't know. Is the issue political or non-political? Which is it in, say, China?

[/COLOR]

Why can it not be both? The non-political becomes political just as quantity becomes quality.

Why can it not be both? The non-political becomes political just as quantity becomes quality.

I think you just tried to dazzle me with "Wax on, wax off". After this post, I'm dropping the discussion and going to see if I can find a prozac tab to pop.

As far I can tell, you think the article is disingenuous, (intentionally) ill-informed, opportunistic, manipulative and aggressively ideological. And wrong. You also think that the solution in this case is achievable by non-political means.

To put it nicely, none of that (including your political/non-political superposition) is on point. For starters, THE PERSPECTIVE IS NOTHING.

When sustenance is on the table, the tenor of every discussion changes. You think the federalists couldn't drum up some other sob story of someone getting screwed by the EPA (say, getting driven out of business by "over regulation").

Anaxarchos told me a long time ago to stop playing the expert. If the ills of capitalist society could be prescribed away, they would be. If any of the prescriptions worked (other than the 'Zac) it would be quite apparent by this late date. (and we're obviously not talking on technical grounds alone).

So the analogy here is between the "stealing" of wood in the Marx article and the polluting of air in the Fed article. In the one is a law that places the protection of wooded areas above the needs of working people, in the other is the placing of "clean" air over the needs of working people.

I guess I might write a letter! It isn't a question of whether clean air laws are good or not, but where the priorities are and why.

So the analogy here is between the "stealing" of wood in the Marx article and the polluting of air in the Fed article. In the one is a law that places the protection of wooded areas above the needs of working people, in the other is the placing of "clean" air over the needs of working people.

I guess I might write a letter! It isn't a question of whether clean air laws are good or not, but where the priorities are and why.

Not really an analogy. In the 1840s people burning wood to survive was an important issue. 170 years later..we're still talking about people burning wood to survive.

Why do the working class oppose the bourgeoisie?


It is unfit to rule because it is incompetent to assure an existence to its slave within his slavery, because it cannot help letting him sink into such a state, that it has to feed him, instead of being fed by him. Society can no longer live under this bourgeoisie, in other words, its existence is no longer compatible with society.

I think you just tried to dazzle me with "Wax on, wax off". After this post, I'm dropping the discussion and going to see if I can find a prozac tab to pop.

As far I can tell, you think the article is disingenuous, (intentionally) ill-informed, opportunistic, manipulative and aggressively ideological. And wrong. You also think that the solution in this case is achievable by non-political means.

To put it nicely, none of that (including your political/non-political superposition) is on point. For starters, THE PERSPECTIVE IS NOTHING.

When sustenance is on the table, the tenor of every discussion changes. You think the federalists couldn't drum up some other sob story of someone getting screwed by the EPA (say, getting driven out of business by "over regulation").

Anaxarchos told me a long time ago to stop playing the expert. If the ills of capitalist society could be prescribed away, they would be. If any of the prescriptions worked (other than the 'Zac) it would be quite apparent by this late date. (and we're obviously not talking on technical grounds alone).

Dunno 'wax on....' Some Karate Kid thing I ain't bothering with.

Dunno if the solution is achievable, the final answer is always 'end capitalism'.

I think that 'federalists' a slob writer who could get away with such given his audience.

As has so often been the case I apparently don't know what you're talking about, the nuance of your argument flies over my head like a displaying woodcock. Oh well.

The non-political becomes political just as quantity becomes quality.

If class determines the consciousness of the individual then how can this be? If it has the potential to become political then wasn't it in the first place, or it will never become political?

I just heard a line from Ice-T (of all people) that sums-up everything rather nicely. It was said in the context of an argument with a British interviewer who was trying to get Ice-T to say that guns were bad. But T just said that in the US guns were a fundamental part of society and it would never be otherwise. The interviewer asked what was the need for guns and Ice-T said without missing a beat you needed protection from the authorities. The interviewer asked, "what on earth, for?" And Ice-t said, "As the poet said, You can never find justice on stolen land."

The bottom line is that the bourgeois ruling class has zero interest in the working class, except as a source of labor, period. No laws, no regulations, no nothing is ever promulgated for the benefit of workers that is not directly tied to our role as labor. When Nixon established the EPA, what, I wonder, was his motivation? When Kissinger signed off on it, was it for "Humanity"?

In the Atlantic magazine there is a pictorial of how bad things were in the 1970s. The idea is that they are much better now. I wonder...
http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2010/12/gallery-why-nixon-created-the-epa/67351/

If class determines the consciousness of the individual then how can this be? If it has the potential to become political then wasn't it in the first place, or it will never become political?

Sometimes it's best to stick to thebasics. In this case, the basic point is about INTERESTS (and ignoreall the stuff these goofs are saying in this thread, they're justclowning me..I think). When the common interest (ask yourself:common to whom?) comes into confrontation with a particular interest,the common interest wins.


That is fine and good until it comes upagainst the need to eat (or, in this example, burn wood for heat –but don't get sidetracked by that). This is the starting basis ofFeuerbach's materialism (which greatly influenced Young Marx andYoung Engels).


Why do the proletarians oppose thebourgeoisie? Don't listen to me let Marx tell you (for which, Idirect you back to the OP).

Capitalism Unmasked: Numbers reveal the expansion of social inequalities in the 21st century

https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-ewe2-zlwX0o/WGo8_GucCjI/AAAAAAAACGQ/ph6C741wXdIk3CUDqLFTBx7fZB0DO-9cACLcB/s320/Capitalism.jpg

The poorest half of the world's population shares a bit under the 1% of the global wealth, while the richest 10% owns the 88% of the total global wealth. The 0.7% of the world's population owns 116.6 trillion dollars!

1. The richest 1% of the world's population controls half of the global wealth. Despite the economic crisis, the number of millionaires in a worldwide scale was increased during the last 12 months of 2016.

2. According to a survey by Credit Suisse, 3.4 billion people- the 71% of the world's population- share only 7.4 trillion dollars, less than the wealth of the 2,473 billionaires around the world.

3. The total number of billionaires grew by 81% since 2009, a year after the collapse of Lehman Brothers, while their wealth was more than doubled. According to data provided by Wealth-X and UBS, 16.6 million people (0.334% of the global population) own 77 trillion dollars, which is almost the annual global GDP.

4. Approximately 211,275 millionaires (0.004% of the global population) own the 12.8% (29.7 trillion dollars) of the global wealth, while 2,325 billionaires own 7.3 trillion dollars.

5. The wealth of the richest 62 people has risen by 45% in the five years since 2010 – that's an increase of more than half a trillion dollars ($542bn), to $1.76 trillion.

6. Since the turn of the century, the poorest half of the world’s population has received just 1% of the total increase in global wealth, while half of that increase has gone to the top 1%. The average annual income of the poorest 10% of people in the world has risen by less than $3 each year in almost a quarter of a century. Their daily income has risen by less than a single cent every year (Credit Suisse, 2015).

7. Approximately 780,000,000 people lack access to clean water, while 2.5 billion people lack access to sanitation.

8. Every year, approximately 3,500,000 children die from hunger.

https://communismgr.blogspot.com/2017/01/capitalism-unmasked-numbers-reveal.html

Those 200+K millionaires must be something like the top 10% or less of that rather extensive range of income. Think there's a million 'millionaires' in US alone, though not sure if that includes 'asset millionaires'. These are people who while not the 'movers & shakers' fully enjoy the privileges of the ruling class and should not be separated from that class by some random metrics. And don't get me started about the upper middle class, the 1st rank of 'house negros'. One percent my ass, more like 10%, but some liberals might get their feeling hurt.

Capitalism Unmasked: Numbers reveal the expansion of social inequalities in the 21st century

The excuses given by Westerners for the worldwide disparities in wealth, and even subsistence, in human misery and "opportunity" are the same excuses given 100, 200 years ago: "Well, development is uneven, don't you see? Some regions, some peoples are simply not yet advanced enough to reap the fruits of modern progress. We are bringing them along as quickly as they can be brought. In the mean time they must adhere strictly to what is deemed best for them by their betters...er, I mean, by those of us who have their best interests at heart and understand these issues better."

In the 1850s the British were telling all their colonies to just relax, they would be brought along at the correct pace and soon would be on an equal footing with the rest of the "developed world" - it was The White Man's Burden, after all. But that is still the song and dance performed by the US and its thralls today! Very little has changed, except perhaps, that no one believes them anymore. Now, it is just colonial booj selling out their countrymen and with the US army backing them, little or nothing the various peoples can do about it. Syria is making a good show, with Russian help (we will see what price-tag comes along with that help), but that conflict is far from over and there will be sell-out opportunities at every turn. Ukraine, Yemen, Sudan, Eritrea, the entire Middle East, all of Central Africa, and the list goes on.

There is only one force that can stop this, that can end this inhuman madness; and that force largely slumbers and doesn't recognize itself in the mirror...

The excuses given by Westerners for the worldwide disparities in wealth, and even subsistence, in human misery and "opportunity" are the same excuses given 100, 200 years ago: "Well, development is uneven, don't you see? Some regions, some peoples are simply not yet advanced enough to reap the fruits of modern progress. We are bringing them along as quickly as they can be brought. In the mean time they must adhere strictly to what is deemed best for them by their betters...er, I mean, by those of us who have their best interests at heart and understand these issues better."

In the 1850s the British were telling all their colonies to just relax, they would be brought along at the correct pace and soon would be on an equal footing with the rest of the "developed world" - it was The White Man's Burden, after all. But that is still the song and dance performed by the US and its thralls today! Very little has changed, except perhaps, that no one believes them anymore. Now, it is just colonial booj selling out their countrymen and with the US army backing them, little or nothing the various peoples can do about it. Syria is making a good show, with Russian help (we will see what price-tag comes along with that help), but that conflict is far from over and there will be sell-out opportunities at every turn. Ukraine, Yemen, Sudan, Eritrea, the entire Middle East, all of Central Africa, and the list goes on.

There is only one force that can stop this, that can end this inhuman madness; and that force largely slumbers and doesn't recognize itself in the mirror...

Suchan coined a good phrase to describe the Russian ruling class, "colonially neoliberal".

Off Our Butts
How smoking bans extinguish solidarity

June Thunderstorm

http://48ic4g3gr5iyzszh237mlfcm9b.wpengine.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/B33_Thunderstorm_01.jpg
© BENOIT TARDIF, COLAGENE

The powers that be say anti-smoking legislation is for our own well-being. Nothing could be further from the truth. The attack on cigarette smoking does not improve the lives of those it claims to protect, be they the “self-destructive” workers who smoke or the moralizing professionals who complain about having to smell them. Anti-smoking legislation is, and always has been, about social control. It is about ratcheting up worker productivity and fostering class hatred, to keep us looking for the enemy in each other instead of in those who are making a killing off cigarettes and anti-smoking campaigns alike. It legitimates the privatization of public space, limits popular assembly, and forces the working class out of political life into private isolation via the social technology of shame. It whitewashes the violence exacted on the poor by the rich to make it all seem like the worker’s own doing. It is, in short, class war by another name.

It is easy to charge hypocrisy on the part of supposedly benevolent governments concerned with “public health.” Alcohol and sugar damage the consumer to an extent comparable to cigarettes, and hurt “non-drinkers” as well—ask any woman familiar with drunk men, or the cane-cutters of Latin America. But the class character of the war on smoking is so pronounced that one begins to wonder just who the “public” in “public health” is anyway. It certainly does not include Nicaraguan plantation workers, nor most black Americans—unless we can call police murdering Eric Garner for selling single cigarettes some sort of “pro-life” operation. Of course, cops in the United States also kill black men simply for walking around and breathing, so maybe cigarette packs should read: “Smoking Is a Leading Cause of Death Unless You Are a Black Man, in

Which Case SMOKE ’EM IF YOU GOT ’EM.”

Neither does the “public” protected by public health initiatives include people of the working class, no matter what color they are. If it did, initiatives would be directed first and foremost at the process of production, not consumption. And I mean production of everything. After all, anyone who works for minimum wage already expects organ damage, physical pain, a reduced quality of life, and an untimely death. And that, no doubt, is why the “If You Smoke You’ll Get Sick” warnings on packs aren’t working very well to inspire this particular group to quit: working shit jobs for shit pay is making the working class sicker, faster. And yet the promoter of “public health” does not concern herself with how the workers must soon enter the building to demolish rotten fiberboard all day. She is interested only in what they consume outside the door on their brief ten-minute breaks. Why should this be?

The Polluting Poor

This apparent contradiction clears up once we understand that the public health campaigns of modern government have never been about protecting everyone. They are, rather, about protecting privileged citizens from the dangerously contaminating poor. “Health and safety” provided the rationale for corralling dispossessed peasants into England’s workhouses and slave-trading navy, just as “health and safety” was the slogan of British imperialists working to justify colonialism and the slave ships themselves. In fact, it seems when civilized governments discuss “health and safety,” what often follows is “sickness and death,” so we are wise to stay on guard.
Public health campaigns have never been about protecting everyone. They are, rather, about protecting the most privileged citizens from the dangerously contaminating poor.
From early modern times, the emerging capitalist bourgeoisie worked to articulate its particular value in contrast to the “hedonistic” aristocrats and the “irrational” underclass, both imagined as grotesque. The masses, in particular, came to be defined by a supposed excessive enjoyment of bodily pleasures. This was in pointed contrast to the new self-denying entrepreneur, who pretended not to have any bodily functions. Orgasms, eating, sweating, and shitting were impolite, dirty things, which anxious bourgeois moralists projected onto others in a fit of collective neurosis.

Indeed, women, the poor, and “primitive” colonial subjects were all conveniently constructed as porous and leaking “mouth-breathers” driven by primal desires, while elites were rational, well-contained, and ultimately decoupled from the body and its practical functioning. The poor or racialized woman, imagined as spreading disease with her unbridled sexuality and infecting touch, was of particular concern to the new social hygienists. Hence the trope of dangerous servant women such as “Typhoid Mary,” the New York cook who was quarantined for more than two decades after being apprehended in 1915 as a “symptomless carrier.”

This social imaginary persists today in many guises, one of which is the dehumanization of the polluting smoker via her depiction as a series of dismembered rotting body parts (such as the nasty impaired lungs we keep seeing in anti-smoking propaganda), all in the interest of public health. Car emissions, soda pop, pharmaceutical medications, and nano-weaponized drones all have the potential to disturb the healthful existence of the young white bourgeois child, yet her mother supports these ventures with her taxes and consumer choices while spitting insults at the smoker waiting at a bus stop: she’s just a toxic bag of body parts, after all.

I recently saw a woman brandishing the Mercedes Benz of strollers walk through a sea of idling traffic toward a smoker only to say the smoker was “murdering her baby” by polluting the air. Such an act has nothing to do with protecting children, and everything to do with venting bourgeois malaise by attacking powerless people whom state authorities have constructed as abject and undeserving of respect. These same state authorities allow corporations to poison our food and water supply—so of course they don’t mind if we lose our shit over some smoking neighbors instead. Indeed, the mouth-breathing neighbor with nasty black lungs is apparently more threatening than cigarette smoke itself: although the smoky wisp that has not yet been inhaled is more toxic, the great danger to non-smokers, according to public-health authorities, is second-hand smoke. Ultimately, the cigarette stands in for what bourgeois bystanders have always been most afraid of—the notion that they, too, have bodies, and that these bodies materially coexist with, and indeed create, the “vile” working class.

Public Space, Re-classified

I am not suggesting any sinister conspiracy of technocrats here, but rather a confluence of vested interests. The push to ban smoking in the workplace in the 1980s did indeed stem from research on “Increasing Productivity Through On-Site Smoking Control”—but of course not everyone concerned about tobacco was a profit-seeking vampire, nor were foes of workplace smoking specifically targeting the poor. Smokers at the time were still considered “classy.”

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No fun, not ever: WWII-era posters warned wholesome young men and women of the dangers of STDs.

This is why the eighties campaign to vilify smoking was one and the same with a bid to de-class it. Much as women were sold sophistication by way of Benson & Hedges, Holiday, and Parliament, with men offered similar (simulations of) power and mobility in Marlboro Country, cigarettes were to be made unappealing through new associations with foulness, odor, dirt, depravity, uncontrollable desire, and the inescapability of body parts—concepts that the bourgeoisie, in their efforts at distinction, had long projected onto the racialized working poor. In other words, cigarettes were symbolically associated with the lower classes before the poor were the majority of those (still) smoking, this being part and parcel of constructing the act of smoking as unhealthy. Smoking was consistently depicted as both unhealthy and an emerging professional-life taboo that might derail an eager yuppie’s career advancement. “Cigarettes May Burn Holes in Your Career” was the alarm sounded in a 1985 magazine feature in Career World, with other savvy works of eighties career counseling echoing the same theme.

Now, in 2016, cigarette smoking in North America is indeed more common among people living in poverty. They smoke because they do not have the time or money to eat properly, because other, more respectable mind-altering drugs are not available to them, because it is something to enjoy. They do it because their jobs (when they still exist) are so boring and physically painful that they would rather die. Yet professionals in the wellness industry routinely describe their smoking social inferiors as “stupid” and “irrational” on the basis of their supposedly self-undermining lifestyle choices.

It’s by now an iron law that whenever the poor are discussed, so are their “bad life choices.” If professionals can’t do something properly or fast enough, they can readily avail themselves of a diagnosis of one or another “health problem”—even something as vague and generic as “stress” or “burnout.” These are conditions that are imagined to have stricken them randomly—as opposed to a malignant, self-inflicted malady tied to their lifestyle, upbringing, or that sketchy antidepressant they stupidly decided to take. Even though so many children of the professional class clearly have asthma due in part to the persistent bourgeois hygiene neurosis (the antibacterial hand gel all but mandated by this neurosis being a proven contributing factor), they and their germophobe parents deserve empathy, time off, and specific disability rights. By contrast, working-class smokers deserve only reproach and are asked to tiptoe around the expansive, socio-moral and self-induced sensitivities of the rich.

This wildly differential diagnostic treatment, which draws on age-old caricatures of the poor as case studies in lapsed self-control, parallels the entirely differential structure of empathy in the working-class workplace: whenever low-income workers can’t do something properly or fast enough, they are simply fired, and anything that would otherwise qualify as a health problem or disability is chalked up to “personal failure.” After all, this is someone who made the “bad choice” to live in poverty in the first place.

It is no coincidence that these same workers are widely perceived to deserve the exemptions of “health” as little as they deserve proper pay. “Public health” has always
reinforced class divisions through such unequal attributions of “choice” versus “constraint.” As a university student, I could not get a proper note from the Office of Students with Disabilities prescribing some time off to quit smoking because, as the nurse said, “Starting smoking is something you chose to do.” My peer with back problems also chose to get into the car that crashed during her European holiday, yet it seems to be taken for granted that professionals simply “need” vast cosmopolitan mobility. (One can almost hear a public health flunky confronted with this counterexample gasping at the suggestion that this health outcome was also, in some deep sense of things, an earned one: “You can’t suggest that was her own doing! . . . One needs to get around somehow!”)

No equivalent concept of structural “constraint” is applied to the working-class smoker, who is rather imagined to enjoy (but mishandle) infinite power and choice. This is so even though the smoker in question is brought up to smoke just as the jetsetter is to fly, and continues to do so largely because state and capital consider her undeserving of food. In fact, the smoker needs nicotine to function just as the suburban professional needs his car, and if she can’t perform at work for even just two days, it will actually matter. She may lose what little food access she has. Furthermore, this smoker’s daily activities, paid and otherwise, which would be curtailed by the pains of nicotine withdrawal, are generally important for the greater social good. An obvious early casualty is the caregiving labor involved in the “second shift” duties of working mothers in the domestic sphere. Huffington Post writer Linda Tirado says it all:

When I am too tired to walk one more step, I can smoke and go for another hour. When I am enraged and beaten down and incapable of accomplishing one more thing, I can smoke and I feel a little better, just for a minute. It is the only relaxation I am allowed. It is not a good decision, but it is the only one that I have access to. It is the only thing I have found that keeps me from collapsing or exploding.

And so the lowest-paid workers continue to smoke, with public smoking restrictions serving only to inspire working-class shame and ruling-class belligerence. Whether because workers smoke or their friends do, the traditional places of working-class congregation are now closed to them—the pub, the diner, the park, and even the sidewalk. It is no coincidence that fifteen feet from the door stands the gutter. And how convenient for the boss that shooing smoking workers from the door downstairs makes it less likely for them to bond in conversation.

Today’s student left is unfortunately complicit. Its adherents implement “scent- free spaces” prohibiting perfume, tobacco, and industrial odors in their organizing meetings, because it is apparently more important that the fraction of bourgeois professionals with allergies participates in their “anti-capitalist” social movements than the majority of all people living below the poverty line. They call these maneuvers “accessibility policies.”

Once, at an Occupy Wall Street assembly, standing six feet beyond the last concentric circle in the parking lot, I lit up a cigarette. In short order, I was asked to leave. I insisted on Occupying. Such are the grinding wars of public accommodation in the United States—a country whose people are so poorly entitled to any public space that simply occupying a park is a big deal. In other countries around the world, workers do that sort of thing all the time. Maybe the American resistance could go and do likewise—if, that is, its leaders would welcome workers to their meetings, cigarettes and all.

Smokers of the World, Exhale!

If the lifestyle lords of the ruling class want us to quit smoking, they can provide us with the resources required to spend a quarter of our waking hours drinking kale smoothies, doing yoga, and attending trauma therapy just like them. As long as they fail to meet such elementary demands of mutual social obligation, they deserve much worse than a little second-hand smoke. Meanwhile, we members of the smoking class might consider using bourgeois paranoia to our advantage. We might start organizing “Smoke-Ins” fifteen feet away from high-end daycares, exhaling in their general direction until all kitchen and cleaning staff are paid five times the minimum wage plus full health and dental coverage. Persons of the educated class may suggest this is “mean” or “violent,” of course, at which point we may direct them to the reputable oeuvres of Frantz Fanon and Walter Benjamin.

We might start organizing “Smoke-Ins” fifteen feet away from high-end daycares, until all kitchen and cleaning staff are paid five times the minimum wage.
If the government really cared about working-class smokers’ health, our political elites could easily fund our well-paid vacations, free therapy, and other support services by slashing corporate subsidies. Instead, they direct bourgeois unhappiness our way. Instead, they blame the poor for contaminating the world, while funding paramilitary offensives in defense of filthy transnational mining projects and neocolonial oil-and-resource wars—conflicts that will make the world much less safe for their children than a smoldering cigarette ever could. Indeed, even if government did offer smoking citizens the most tempting of Golden Handshakes, we might nonetheless exercise our prerogative to refuse their dirty money and blow smoke in their faces instead.

In the meantime, my last words for the smokers are simply: Never let anyone make you feel ashamed. You should be able to smoke precisely as much as you want. This is not because mass-produced cigarettes or “Big Tobacco” are beautiful things. They are not. It is, rather, because we are beautiful and precious. Our lives are beautiful and precious. Our lives, despite what the bosses say, are actually for our own enjoyment, not to make others’ lives easier, cleaner, and lazier. As long as the value of professionals’ lives is not measured primarily in terms of their effects on others, but according to their pleasure, so shall our own lives and value be measured.
Like them, we shall pursue our own desires for pleasure no matter how whimsical, and if our desire is to smoke, then offended professionals can just hold their breath for once—perhaps using this blessed interval of silence to meditate on their thieving class and its own grotesquely swollen “carbon footprint.” If state and capital are going to steal our precious energies and vast hours of our lives to line their pockets with profit, leaving us with poor sleep, insufficient rent money, and a diet of 7-Eleven specials as we provide the country’s most basic services, the very least we deserve is to enjoy our cigarettes in peace. So if anyone asks, it’s not that smoking should be permitted because cigarettes can be proved an absolute good, which they cannot, but simply because for the time being we happen to smoke them. We might call this giving professionals a taste of their own entitlement. Heaven forbid they choke on it.

This story was produced with support from the Economic Hardship Reporting Project, a nonprofit devoted to journalism about inequality.

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