Bulletin #699
Subject: CLASS CONSCIOUSNESS;
REVOLUTIONARY CONSCIOUSNESS –WHAT’S THE DIFFERENCE AND WHO CARES?
25 May 2016
Grenoble, France
Dear Colleagues and Friends of CEIMSA,
The unequivocal military defeat of the United States
by the Vietnamese caused world public opinion to turn against American
imperialism. A military defeat
--unlike moral failure, or cultural ineffectiveness, or financial surrender—has
a lasting effect on public opinion. The immorality of African American slavery,
the culture of genocide by Europeans against Amerindian nations, or the
financial war being waged by German bankers today against the Greek nation and
by American-led financial institutions against the world --these defeats cannot
be compared with the French defeat in 1962 in the Algerian armed struggle for
independence, or the US military defeat in 1974 at the hands of the Vietnamese.
The historic films, The Battle of
Algiers (1966), by Gillo
Pontecorvo, and Hearts and Minds (1974), by Peter Davis, both offer excellent explanations for imperial
military defeat in the last century and the lasting effects these defeats had
on world public opinion.
In the early chapters of Mark Ames’ book, Going
Posta: Rage, Murder, and Rebellion from Reagan’s Workplaces to Clinton’s Columbine
and Beyond (2005), a problematic is developed that slave revolts are
relatively infrequent and inconsequential in the history of slavery. The author
discusses the Denmark Vesey rebellion
in Charleston, South Carolina, 1821-1822, and the more credible Nat
Turner slave rebellion in Southampton County, Virginia, during
August 1831, in which rebel slaves killed anywhere from 55 to 65 people, “the
highest number of fatalities caused by any slave uprising in the American South.”
Ames then proceeds to discuss “the slave mentality” in contemporary American society since “the Reagan Revolution” and the different forms of violence this ideological shift has created in the workplace, from applied managerial proactive techniques of top-down degradation and humiliation of workers and students to the ever-increasing number of reactive rage-murders in school yards and workplaces across corporate America. As the cultural norm changes under the influence of neo-liberal ideology, violence as well as the slave mentality has proliferated; the big “winners” in this exaggerated rapport de force in society are aware of this sea change that has taken place, and they take the necessary precautions to do what they must to naturalize the increase in violence and to stabilize the class-divided society in decline, from which they hope to derive greater and greater profits.
It
is interesting that nearly all of the books on this [kind of] crime are manuals
and handbooks designed for management, published by specialized professional
publishers, rather than books for a wider audience published by trade
publishers. It is as if the broader implications –of linking rage massacres to
changes in the corporate culture—are being held back from a wider audience. (p.123)
The very idea of collectivizing to protect
their interests is anathema to white-collar, middle-class American
professionals. They have always seen themselves as the class in adversarial
relation to unions. . . .
The ghost of Western Union founder Jay
Gould, who once boasted, ‘I can hire one half of the working class to kill the
other,’ is back, only the middle-class is now in the same galley ship that the
working class once was. ‘I can hire one bourgeois to alienate the other’ –this
was something Marx had never foreseen.
In this highly atomized corporate culture,
it is no wonder that workplace rage rebellions should take place in the form of
one-man suicide missions. If the idea of banding together to fight for
something as one’s self interest –unionizing for a dental plan or to keep wages
and pensions from being slashed—is frowned upon , then who would consider
raising arms with fellow employees to wage an insurrection against the company
that oppresses them? No employee would be able to trust another to keep the
plan secret; moreover, no employee is ever aware that anyone else is as
miserable and desperate as he is. The culture demands that people smile and
love their work –and most do, or at least most believe they do.
Neither the FBI nor the Secret Service has
been able to create a profile for a rampage murderer –not in the office world,
nor in the schoolyard world.
The
inability to profile these rage murderers is important because it strongly
suggests that external factors, that is environmental factors, create the
rampage murderer, rather than the internal psychological disorders of the
rampage attacker. Serial killers, for example, can be profiled because they
share distinct psychological characteristics. But nearly anyone is a potential
rage murderer. They spring out from anywhere in that vast unrecognized middle.
Some are single, some married. Some are anti-social loner types, some friendly
and well-liked. . . .
Anyone could snap anywhere; anyone’s a
suspect. And that means that employees go out of their way to make sure they’re
not perceived as being potentially dangerous, no matter how cruelly they are
treated. Employees are so terrified of uttering the wrong quip, one that could
be misconstructed, as even the slightest hint of disgruntlement could be
grounds for a visit from police, a forced psychological examination, and a
destroyed career. No, the only hope is to smile all the time and pray that no
one notices how miserable you are –pray, in fact, that you yourself never know
how miserable you are. And if you snap, then don’t let it show until the
morning you appear with your duffel bag (arsenal). (Mark Ames, Going Postal,
pp. 119-120)
Contrary to the general perception of office massacres as random
shootings by crazed loners who snap, nearly every rampage murderer targets both
specific oppressors –usually supervisors—as well as the company in general.
Targeting a company through murder and destruction might strike us as totally
irrational, not to mention tactically unsound. In the first place; the
shareholders are generally people or organizations far removed from the company
premises. Second, q company isn’t really a tangible thing. It is a structure, a
legal setup, a concept, a link in a distribution chain. This is what makes a
company seem so invulnerable and daunting to a disgruntled employee –the enemy
is some kind of bewitching abstract. It’s center of gravity is dispersed and
diffused, so perfectly hidden that it makes going after the Predator
monster seem like shooting fish in a barrel. The company is also a set of
implanted impressions and emotions: the company is the routine, the system, the
partitions and industrial carpeting, the workstations and company parking lot,
the memo board and the gossip; the buzzing overhead fluorescent lights, the
stench of cheap coffee grinds and morning breath, the other people’s moods; the
petty intrigues, morale, the Friday Casual Day, and the box of Krispy Kreme
donuts in the break room. Yet the abstract company is also made up of concrete
assets, and those assets include not only its cash, buildings, and equipment,
but also its personnel. And, as the rampage murderers demonstrated, the
abstract company is concretely represented by its image or its sanctity or its
karma. Whatever you call that intangible, this ‘image’ or ‘sanctity’ is the
company’s soft underbelly. The rampage murderer who attacks his workplace seeks
to kill the abstract company by killing its literal assets and splattering the
image in blood, thereby killing both employees and company. Indeed, it is hard
for a company to recover from a rampage murder. Some, like Standard Gravure,
close forever.(pp. 120-121)
The corporate attempts to manage this social debacle
and to maintain a predictable order in the midst of this free-for-all chaos can
be seen in popular cartoons and in lists of “economic films” that have been
made to address the frequent social crises of this century. The acid test of
this cultural expression is what affect it will have on consciousness-raising
activities within the working class.
Reviews
of Economics Films
http://www.facstaff.bucknell.edu/gschnedr/FilmReviews.htm
&
South Park:
Bigger Longer & Uncut (1999)
The 7 items below offer CEIMSA readers a
window to the world of work and class struggle.
Francis
Feeley
Professor
of American Studies
University
of Grenoble-3
Director
of Research
University
of Paris-Nanterre
Center
for the Advanced Study of American Institutions and Social Movements
The
University of California-San Diego
a.
Office Space
(1999)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EYmr46IOIKQ
Directors:
Mike Judge,
Writing:
Mike Judge,
Stars:
Ron Livingston, Jennifer Aniston, David Herman, Ajay Naidu, Diedrich Bader, Stephen Root, Gary Cole
Synopsis: Peter is a drone for a
software company well on his way to a nervous breakdown when a hypnosis mishap
opens his eyes. He becomes so apathetic toward his job that he can't even
muster up the energy to quit. His new no-work ethic is mistaken by a pair of
corporate headhunters as "middle-management potential," and he is
promoted as his pals Michael and Samir are laid off. Frustrated in his attempts
to be down-sized, Peter hatches a plot to embezzle the company.
===========
b.
The Occupation
of the American Mind - RAI with Pink Floyd's Roger Waters
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EYmr46IOIKQ
On Reality Asserts Itself with Paul Jay, legendary musician Roger Waters and
Sut Jhally discuss their new film about the Israeli public relations campaign
to influence U.S. public opinion
===========
c.
The Financial Invasion of Greece
http://therealnews.com/t2/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=31&Itemid=74&jumival=16359
Economist
Michael Hudson says IMF's concern about Greek debt is bogus, this is full scale
financial war, forcing Greece give up ports, pensions, properties and much more
. . . .
===========
d.
Exclusive: Source Reveals How Pentagon
Ruined Whistleblower’s Life
and Set Stage for Snowden’s Leaks
http://www.democracynow.org/2016/5/23/exclusive_source_reveals_how_pentagon_ruined
===========
e.
From: "Mark Crispin Miller" <markcrispinmiller@gmail.com>
Sent: Monday, 23 May, 2016
Subject: [MCM] Clinton Foundation is the "largest unprosecuted
charity fraud ever attempted," claims financial expert Charles Ortel
http://wallstreetonparade.com/2016/05/a-harvard-mba-guy-is-out-to-bring-down-the-clintons/
by Pam Martens and Russ
Martens
===========
f.
39,000 Verizon Workers Enter
Sixth Week on Strike in
the Biggest U.S. Labor Action in
Years
http://www.democracynow.org/2016/5/25/39_000_verizon_workers_enter_sixth
===========
g.
Why Austrians Nearly Elected
a Far Right Candidate as President
http://therealnews.com/t2/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=31&Itemid=74&jumival=16392
The political and democratic crisis in Austria coupled with the economic
conditions nearly handed the presidency to the far right, says economist Walter
Baier