the USA doesn’t have violent workers’ uprisings because our Lockean political and socioeconomic structures discourage the most alienated people from seeking solidarity. the socially isolated are incentivized towards the instant gratification of shooting up their workplace instead of building power - ThreadSky

pastaben.bsky.social • 9 days ago

the USA doesn’t have violent workers’ uprisings because our Lockean political and socioeconomic structures discourage the most alienated people from seeking solidarity. the socially isolated are incentivized towards the instant gratification of shooting up their workplace instead of building power

Reposted from Chris Person

Really fascinated with this administration’s plan to engineer, on a structural level, an unemployed loner with no support structure that knows how to use firearms and has nothing left to lose.

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esedia.bsky.social•9 days ago

I see a bit of hope based on Leninist analysis tbh

pastaben.bsky.social•9 days ago

I know mark ames is an asshole but his book Going Postal is a must read. shows that post-neoliberal turn american workers are desperate enough to seek revenge, but without class consciousness their rebellions are incoherent killing sprees that target fellow workers in addition to bosses

pastaben.bsky.social•9 days ago

this lack of a class angle prevents “going postal” from being seen as a response to the misery of capitalism. instead it’s just one loner with a screw loose. righteous anger is ruined when manifested as indiscriminate slaughter that (quite reasonably!) nobody wants to identify or empathize with

pastaben.bsky.social•9 days ago

this is why luigi struck a chord—he didn’t target his boss, or even the ceo of *his own* insurance company, he went after a symbolic 3rd party target. he’s not exactly class conscious but he understood that his action could only send a message if it wasn’t seen as purely his violent revenge fantasy

pastaben.bsky.social•9 days ago

this is what’s frustrating about being an american marxist—the anger towards the capitalist class is there! there are more than enough people with nothing to lose who want to resist or reject their economic exploitation. they’re just all silo’d off from each other and settle for murder-suicide

pastaben.bsky.social•9 days ago

ames finds a historical antecedent in slave uprisings in the south. the prose is regrettable/insensitive in a lot of places, but his argument holds up: plantations prevented the enslaved from communicating with others and forming a critical mass of slaves revolting as a class…

pastaben.bsky.social•9 days ago

there were relatively few large rebellions involving multiple plantations, nat turner style. but there were a LOT of cases where individuals simply snapped and killed their overseers or owners and fellow slaves seen as collaborators. pushed to the brink, they had no option but to go proto-postal

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