Susan's blog

Machismo at Work: False-Consciousness or Self-Defense?

by Susan Rosenthal

The man was nearly deaf. "He won’t wear hearing protection!" exclaimed his exasperated wife. I turned to the man and asked if this was true. He nodded and confessed that none of the guys at work wore hearing protection.

Feminists would describe this behavior as workplace machismo, or male toughness. Marxists would describe it as false consciousness, where workers fail to recognize their class interests, in this case, to protect their health on the job.

I suspected something else, so I replied, "I think I understand. If you value your hearing, then you are valuing yourself, and that would create conflict in a job where you are not valued." His eyes widened in recognition. Then he looked at the floor and nodded. His wife asked me what I was talking about. And so I explained.

The more employers devalue their employees, the less they have to pay them, and the more profit they will make. In contrast, employees seek greater recognition of their contribution in the form of higher wages. Workers command more respect when they pull together.

In 1937, General Motors was the biggest corporation in the world. Genora (Johnson) Dollinger describes the confidence of workers who forced GM to recognize their union:

"Every time something came up that couldn’t be settled or the workers got a tough foreman who told them, "Go to hell," they’d shut down the line. The men were so cocky, they’d say to the foremen, "You don’t like it?" They’d push the button and shut down the line."

In response, the capitalist class set out to strip the unions of their power. In Subterranean Fire: A History of Working-Class Radicalism in the United States, Sharon Smith explains how conservative union officials joined with government to drive socialists and other militants out of the unions. By the 1950s, American unions had been transformed from fighting organizations controlled by workers to bureaucratic organizations run by middle-class professionals. But the bosses wanted more. They wanted complete control of the shop floor.

Degrading workers

In Labor and Monopoly Capital: The Degradation of Work in the Twentieth Century, Harry Braverman describes how employers robbed workers of their power by applying an industrial system called "scientific management" or Taylorism.

Frederick Winslow Taylor developed three methods for transferring control over the labor process from workers to managers: separating mental and manual work; de-skilling the labor process; and micro-managing every step of the work. In combination, these methods reduce the skilled worker to a cog in a machine, interchangeable with any other cog. As a writer of the time observed,

"It is not, truly speaking the labor that is divided; but the men: divided into mere segments of men — broken into small fragments and crumbs of life; so that all the little piece of intelligence that is left in a man is not enough to make a pin, or a nail, but exhausts itself in making the point of a pin or the head of a nail."

Today, Taylor’s methods are the norm. Fast-food restaurants are structured like assembly lines. Hospitals function like factories where separate departments tend to different parts of the body, in assembly-line fashion. Classroom courses are scripted to the point of describing which hand gestures to make while teaching.

Devalued workers are treated as expendable. An estimated 55,000 Americans die every year from occupational injury and illness, far more than died on 9/11. Despite this shocking level of industrial slaughter, politicians do not denounce employers as "terrorists," and they do not order Homeland Security to patrol the workplace.

Ninety percent of all work sites in America, covering 40 percent of the nation’s workforce, are not inspected regularly for health and safety violations. When violations are found, the penalties are too small to force any real change.

The State virtually gives employers a license to kill workers. In 1970, Congress declared that causing the death of a worker by deliberately violating safety laws is a misdemeanor (not a felony) with a maximum sentence of six months in jail. This is half the maximum for harassing a wild donkey on federal land.

Workers stripped of skill, dignity and social worth suffer low morale, sickness and frequent absenteeism, all of which lower productivity. To boost productivity, experts in medicine, psychology and human relations serve as the maintenance crew for the human machinery. These professionals are not employed to remedy the assault on the worker. Their job is to manage the worker’s reactions to that assault. The worker becomes the problem, not the way work is organized. And that’s how a middle-aged worker with hearing loss ends up at the doctor’s office feeling embarrassed about not using hearing protection.

False consciousness?

Is this worker suffering from "false consciousness"? I would say no. He knows he has a conflict. He understands the danger of excessive noise and wants to protect himself. However, he also recognizes (even when he can’t put it into words) that if he and his co-workers valued themselves, it would be more difficult to tolerate a job where they are not valued.

Given the employer’s disregard for their hearing, these workers have two choices. They can unite and demand less noise and more effective health and safety provisions. Or they can "go along" by dissociating from their need to protect themselves. The first option would create conflict with the boss. The second option creates conflict with themselves and each other. The workplace is structured to promote the path of least resistance, which is to "go along to get along."

When challenging the social order seems impossible, machismo serves as a form of collective self-defense. Machismo helps male workers bear their degradation by making it seem that they choose to risk their health on the job, as a confirmation of their manly toughness.

To view the problem only as masculine strutting is to fail to recognize the worker’s real oppression. To view the problem only as false consciousness is to disregard the creative forms of self-defense that workers use when they see no class-based alternative.

Similarly, racist workers have a legitimate need to defend their jobs. However, workers who blame other workers for their problems trade apparent short-term gain for real long-term pain. The need for self-defense is real, but the method is self-defeating, because employers use racism to lower living standards for all workers.

Socialists strive to provide workers with the knowledge and experience that will help them to see the social source of their misery and their collective power to end it. The term "false consciousness" is used to explain why workers persist in supporting a system that oppresses them. (Feminists also use the term "false consciousness" to explain why women support a system that oppresses them.)

Marx never used the term "false consciousness," and Engels refers to it only once, in a letter. However, the concept bears an uncanny resemblance to Freud’s concept of psychological resistance. When Freud’s patients refused to accept his interpretation of their problems, he called this "resistance," a psychological defense against discussing, recalling or thinking about painful realities.

Freud’s concept of resistance assumes that the therapist is always right and the patient is always wrong. In reality, therapists frequently fail to appreciate the larger social context that compels people to behave in ways that seem self-defeating, but are actually self-preserving in the absence of other choices.

Consider the unconfident woman who stays with an abusive mate despite her therapist’s recommendation that she leave. Freud would view the deadlock between therapist and patient as resistance, where the patient is resisting the therapist. There is another possibility. The therapist may not appreciate the woman’s financial inability to support herself and her kids and the real possibility that her mate may kill her if she leaves.

Just as the concept of resistance creates conflict between therapist and patient, the concept of false consciousness creates conflict between socialists and non-socialist workers. Who decides whose consciousness is "true" and whose consciousness is "false"? Socialists may not appreciate the extent to which capitalism is structured to keep most people feeling powerless most of the time, regardless of what they know. Understanding these forces is the first step to overcoming them.

The body tells the truth

The self-defense methods that workers use to "get through" are not entirely successful. They preserve a semblance of dignity, but fail to protect against the ravages of exploitation. What the mind refuses to acknowledge, the body protests by generating pain and other disabling symptoms (like hearing loss). As Michael Schneider writes in Neurosis and Civilization,

"As long as the working class does not rebel against these new and intensified forms of exploitation, heart, stomach and circulatory diseases of individual workers will rebel for them. Even though the worker may still ‘go along,’ his circulation, in any event, will not. Even if he says, ‘actually I feel alright,’ his stomach ulcer will prove the contrary."

As the rich get richer, the rest of us get sicker. Capitalism produces obscene wealth at one end of society and epidemics of dis-ease everywhere else. The medical system hides the relationship between class and illness by treating sickness as an individual malfunction, instead of the inevitable price of a profit-driven system. Even universal health care cannot stop the sickness produced by capitalism. Only the working-class majority can transform an illness-generating society into a health-generating one.

Machismo, racism, dissociation, sickness and other forms of self-defense both mask and reveal the reality of worker oppression. By viewing worker compliance with capitalism as false consciousness, socialists pit themselves against workers.

Workers do not want to suffer. They want to be judged even less. Socialists can align with workers by appreciating the complexities of their lives and the ways they defend themselves. This alliance is essential for workers to learn to fight as a class.

As Braverman concludes, until workers fight back as a class they will "remain servants of capital instead of freely associated producers who control their own labor and their own destinies," and they will "work every day to build for themselves more ‘modern,’ more ‘scientific,’ and more dehumanized prisons of labor."

For more, read POWER and Powerlessness. Available at www.powerandpowerlessness.com

America in Crisis, Part II: The Liberal Challenge and the Prospects for Socialism

by Susan Rosenthal

Part I (September 17) discussed the deepening conflict between the rulers and the ruled and the disagreements within the elite on how to address the nation's problems. Part II (below) compares liberal efforts to preserve the system with socialist efforts to replace it.

Containing discontent

The capitalist class is a tiny minority that needs majority consent to rule. That consent could be lost if social problems are allowed to deepen. Arguing that an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure, liberals align with social discontent in order to contain it.

When the President defended insurance industry profits over the needs of sick children, the New York Times shared the nation’s outrage. In "An Immoral Philosophy" (August 1, 2007), Paul Krugman writes,

"What kind of philosophy says that it's O.K. to subsidize insurance companies, but not to provide health care to children?...9 in 10 Americans – including 83 percent of self-identified Republicans – support an expansion of the children's health insurance program...There is, it seems, more basic decency in the hearts of Americans than is dreamt of in Mr. Bush's philosophy."

The liberal media are running to get ahead of a growing number of dissidents, like Naomi Klein and Michael Moore, who are fueling discontent. Klein’s best-selling book, The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism, has joined Moore’s documentary film, SiCKO, to punch holes in the lies that prop up the system. When Oprah and Moore agree on national television that America needs some form of socialized medicine, the wind is definitely shifting.

Suddenly, "socialism" is not such a dirty word. In "A Socialist Plot" (August 27, 2007), Krugman writes, "The truth is that there’s no difference in principle between saying that every American child is entitled to an education and saying that every American child is entitled to adequate health care."

Liberals must convince the capitalist class that a lesser-evil-capitalism, even when it calls itself socialism, is preferable to the threat of real socialism. However, conservatives argue that granting reforms will be the start of a slippery slope. If Americans think they have a right to health care, what else will they think they deserve?

Conservatives remember the 1960s, when Americans gained the confidence to demand racial equality, women’s liberation, aboriginal rights, gay liberation, more social support, higher wages, safer working conditions, more affordable housing, better schools and more access to medical care. There was organized opposition to the arms race, nuclear power, the death penalty, American foreign policy and the Vietnam War. It took a concerted effort and many years to beat back that rebellion.

Is America ready for socialism?

The social crisis and the conflict at the top have opened a space to discuss genuine socialism, a worker-run democracy where ordinary people take collective control of the economy and direct it to meet human needs. The material conditions already exist for such a society.

Because socialism is based on sharing, there must be more than enough to go around. That is no longer a problem.

If the yearly production of American workers was transformed into dollars and equally shared among the population, it would provide $45,000 for every man, woman and child in the nation, or $180,000 for every family of four. This sum would be many times larger if everyone who wanted to work was employed and if the wealth produced in previous years was included.

The same is true on a world scale. Between 1800 and 2000, the amount of wealth produced grew eight times faster than the global population. Only a few have benefited. By 2001, 497 billionaires enjoyed assets of $1.54 trillion, more than the combined incomes of half of humanity.

The second criterion for socialism is a matter of choice. Human beings create the societies in which they live and they can choose to change them.

Most Americans do not choose socialism, because they are bamboozled into thinking that it would not be in their interest. Our rulers insist that there is no alternative to capitalism, as they intensify their barbaric tactics of blame-the-victim and divide-and-rule. By dazzling us with their power, they hope that we will not discover our own, much greater power.

Capitalism isn’t threatened by talk of cooperation and sharing. However, it cannot tolerate demands for a society based on these principles. That’s why the elite have made "socialism" a dirty word. If people knew they could meet their needs and solve their problems without a ruling class, they would have no need for capitalism.

Socialist organizations bring ordinary people together to discover and use their collective power. Where capitalism divides and fragments, socialists link individuals, causes, past events and future dreams into a unified struggle for human survival.

The battle for ideas is critical. To isolate workers and re-enforce their feelings of powerlessness, the capitalist class infects them with fear and pessimism. In contrast, socialists connect workers’ experience of individual suffering with their collective power to eliminate that suffering.

Most important, socialists believe in the working class even when it does not believe in itself.

The anti-globalization movement of the late 1990s raised the hope of change. So did the massive anti-war demonstrations that preceded America’s invasion of the Middle East. When the U.S. began bombing Baghdad, many became discouraged and retreated from activism.

Today, rising discontent is not matched by a corresponding rise in struggle. While millions of Americans are enraged by the deterioration of their lives and society, decades of defeat have deepened the belief that real change is not possible. But beliefs change.

The working class is obedient, not stupid. It has rejected the war despite a steady stream of pro-war propaganda. Workers are also exceedingly patient, but there is a limit to how much unfairness they will tolerate.

With the economy sliding into recession, the New York Times warns, "It seems that ordinary working families are going to have to wait — at the very minimum — until the next cycle to make up the losses they suffered in this one. There’s no guarantee they will."

No one can know when the next struggle will erupt or what its outcome will be. Only one thing is certain. The needs of the capitalist class will continue to clash with the needs of humanity. If we can organize ourselves in sufficient numbers to end the war and win universal health care, we need not stop there. We could proceed to build a very different world based on peace and security for all.

For more, read POWER and Powerlessness. Available at www.powerandpowerlessness.com

America in Crisis, Part I: Class Conflict

by Susan Rosenthal

America is deeply divided. For one thing, most Americans want an end to the war against Iraq and some form of universal health care, while the ruling class is committed to the war and to sacrificing social services to pay for it.

This conflict between the rulers and the ruled reflects a deeper, structural rift. In a series of three articles (Z Magazine, February, April, May, 2007), Jack Rasmus documents how,

"From the early 1980s on, income inequality widened, deepened, and accelerated until today well over $1 trillion in income is being transferred every year from the roughly 90 million working class families in the U.S. to corporations and the wealthiest non-working class households."

Thirty-five years of pro-business social policies have hurtled class inequality back to the level of the 1920s. One percent of Americans now owns half the nation's wealth. In 2005, the total wealth of all U.S. millionaires was $30 trillion, more than the annual wealth produced in China, Japan, Brazil, Russia and the European Union combined!

The extent of inequality has angered the working class and alarmed sections of the establishment. Inequality in "the land of opportunity" is usually blamed on the victim for lacking the skills and determination to succeed. Now that the majority has been left behind, this excuse has lost credibility. Consider this editorial comment from the New York Times (August 29, 2007),

"The median household income last year was still about $1,000 less than in 2000, before the onset of the last recession... [W]hen household incomes rose, it was because more members of the household went to work, not because anybody got a bigger paycheck...The earnings of men and women working full time actually fell more than 1 percent last year...[T]he spoils of the nation’s economic growth have flowed almost exclusively to the wealthy and the extremely wealthy, leaving little for everybody else."

Americas are seething with discontent over falling living standards, the environmental crisis, the war and the abysmal state of the medical system. In the spring of 2006, this anger exploded in the largest demonstrations in the nation’s history. Protesting anti-immigrant policies and chanting "We are America," the working class rose up and punched the capitalist class in the face. That fall, the Republican majority was swept from office by voters who were sick of government lies, incompetence and corruption.

Reform or revolution

The powers-that-be are concerned that popular discontent could coalesce into a generalized rebellion against the system. This happened after World War I, during the 1930s, and in the 1960s.

There are only two solutions to such crises: reform from above to restore confidence in the system or revolution from below to replace it. Let’s examine the first option.

Both the Democratic and Republican Parties are committed to victory in Iraq. To counter widespread anti-war sentiment, Washington has repackaged the war as military support for the Iraqi government, with Iraqi incompetence being blamed for "delaying" troop withdrawal. Regular announcements of "signs of progress" imply that the war is winding down when it is actually escalating. This stalling tactic seems to be working, for now.

Reducing class inequality presents a greater challenge. The New York Times concludes, "What are needed are policies to help spread benefits broadly — be it more progressive taxation, or policies to strengthen public education and increase access to affordable health care."

The elite immediately cry "socialism!" at the suggestion that any portion of the social pie should be returned to the working class. Capitalists want a State that enacts policies just for them and rescues only them. And that’s what they get. In countless ways, capitalism functions as a kind of socialism for the rich.

America’s tax laws free the largest corporations from paying any tax whatsoever. Federal judges have allowed ailing industries to abandon billions of dollars in "burdensome" pension obligations. The multi-billion-dollar federal bailout of mortgage lenders has not been matched by any money for working-class home owners facing foreclosure. And while the Bush administration has allowed Medicare-funded insurance companies to keep millions of dollars that should have been returned to beneficiaries, it vigorously pursues beneficiaries to recover money that it says is owed to insurance companies.

The New York Times doesn’t actually want socialism. It wants a lesser-evil capitalism directed by the Democratic Party.

Liberals and liberal institutions condemn the worst aspects of capitalism in order to preserve the system as a whole.

Most Americans want more investment in the nation’s infrastructure. They want universal healthcare and more funding for schools. They want New Orleans rebuilt and their bridges secure. Liberals know that, unless the system can deliver on some level, the majority will eventually reject that system.

Wiser capitalists remember the French Revolution. Those who take too much can lose their heads. Billionaires like Bill Gates and Warren Buffett prefer to return a small piece of the pie than forfeit the entire bakery.

Gates criticizes the "inequality gap" and devotes a tiny portion of his fortune to charity. Buffett says it’s unfair that he pays less than 18 per cent of his income in taxes, when his secretary pays 30 per cent of hers. Gates and Buffett aren’t socialists. Like the robber-baron philanthropists of the last century, they understand that their class must appear generous to preserve its system of organized thievery.

President Roosevelt faced a similar choice when he fought for the New Deal despite opposition from business interests. In A People’s History of the United States, Howard Zinn explains,

"The Roosevelt reforms…had to meet two pressing needs: to reorganize capitalism in such a way as to overcome the crisis and stabilize the system; also to head off the alarming growth of spontaneous rebellion...— organization of tenants and the unemployed, movements of self-help and general strikes in several cities."

Reining in a 35-year wealth-grabbing binge won’t be easy. Despite liberal demands that Democrats in Congress develop a spine, the Democratic Party serves the business class. Returning any wealth to the working class would undermine Corporate America’s ability to dominate the global economy.

Unless it is forced to use the carrot to quell discontent, the ruling class prefers to use the stick.

The war on terror, with its attack on civil liberties, is the capitalists’ response to inequality and injustice. They seize the wealth; they do not share it. They crush their victims; they do not rescue them. And they don’t feel threatened by a labor movement that is currently too weak to mount a sustained rebellion. At the same time, their confidence has been shaken by their failures to win the war, create a workable immigration policy and resolve the health-care crisis.

Coming next week: America in Crisis, Part II: The Liberal Challenge and the Prospects for Socialism

How Can We Organize Across National Borders?

by Susan Rosenthal

In "Globalization: Theirs or Ours" (August 25), I stated that free trade and protectionist policies both serve the capitalist class and that working people must unite across national borders to raise their living standards. In response, one reader wrote,

I also believe that if all unions in the world work together we can achieve more, but many countries don't have unions, and in some that do, like my birth country Iran, union leaders get arrested all the time. So, my question is, how can we support unions in other counties?

The answer to that question lies in two basic principles of the labor movement: self-determination (what we wish for ourselves, we want for all) and solidarity (an injury to one is an injury to all).

Self-determination

"What we wish for ourselves, we want for all" means that all people must have the right to determine their own affairs. That includes dealing with their own leaders and governments, however corrupt.

The more the U.S. threatens Iran, the more the Iranian government can silence internal dissidents by claiming they are American agents. To support workers in Iran, Iraq, Venezuela, Cuba, Columbia, Africa, Asia, etc., American workers must oppose any U.S. intervention in those nations for any reason.

In The New Military Humanism: Lessons From Kosovo, Noam Chomsky documents how NATO bombed the former Yugoslavia "in the name of principles and values." The actual goal was to take control of a portion of eastern Europe that was formerly under Russia’s influence.

Imperialism presents itself as humanitarian intervention in order to override domestic opposition to war.

The U.S. invaded Iraq on the pretext of protecting the world from nuclear attack, protecting the Iraqi people from a cruel dictator and establishing democracy. These have all proved to be lies. The majority of Iraqis want U.S. troops out of their country, and the majority of Americans and American soldiers agree. Yet, Washington continues its military occupation because, from the beginning, this has been a war for oil.

It is impossible to support workers in other nations and also support our own government invading or meddling in those nations. Capitalism forces us to choose: be loyal to your nation and betray your class or be loyal to your class and betray your nation. (By "nation," the capitalist class means its own interests, not those of the majority.)

The loyalty of the labor movement is divided. Without the awareness or consent of their members, top executives in the AFL-CIO have helped Washington overthrow democratically-elected governments, prop up anti-union dictators and support right-wing unions against progressive governments. When the AFL-CIO backed the short-lived coup against Venezuela’s democratically-elected President, Hugo Chávez, many rank-and-file workers were outraged. As the South Bay (California) Labor Council protested,

There’s no solidarity when labor becomes a go-between, laundering funds and resources from the Bush administration and passing them to groups abroad. That role is more appropriate for government agents — agents of empire…We believe that international labor solidarity must come from the heart of the workers in one country to the heart of workers in another country — a…reciprocal relationship.

Solidarity actions

My first demonstration was at the U.S. embassy in Toronto in the spring of 1965. It was a solidarity rally, protesting police violence against civil rights demonstrators in Selma, Alabama. I was amazed that a group of predominately White people would stand for hours in a cold rain to defend the rights of Black people in another country.

Mutual aid (solidarity) is basic to human nature. Over 70 percent of Americans think that the government should ensure that no one goes without food, clothing or shelter. More than three-quarters of the billions of dollars raised by U.S. non-profit organizations every year is donated by individuals. In every disaster, 9/11, Katrina, the Asian tsunami, ordinary people rally to provide aid.

Worker solidarity has a special power. In the fall of 2003, thousands of dockworkers shut down ports in Los Angeles in solidarity with striking grocery workers. In Brazil, unionists organized a solidarity campaign against U.S. intervention in Colombia and supported striking Volkswagen workers in South Africa.

As the world becomes more integrated, the need for solidarity grows. An increasing number of goods are now manufactured by Chinese workers, assembled by Mexican workers, sold by American workers and serviced by Indian workers. Although workers are divided by national boundaries, global capitalism is forcing them to unite to defend their common interests.

Building solidarity

United we stand. Divided we fall. The political relationships we build today make possible more effective solidarity actions tomorrow.

American unionists are sponsoring Iraqi unionists to tour the United States. Talking person-to-person about what’s really going on in Iraq helps break through the web of self-serving lies spun by the people in power.

Every year, people from around the globe gather at World Social Forums and demonstrations against the G-8 summits. Last year, I attended a Labor Notes conference in Detroit. The most memorable meeting was the one where union activists from more than 17 different countries met in one room.

Workers from Northern Ireland, Iraq and Palestine shared their experiences of organizing under military occupation. Auto workers from Germany, France and the U.S. exchanged tactics on fighting assembly-line speedups. Despite language barriers, our similarities were overwhelming. After the meeting, people traded names and email addresses with great excitement.

An Irish nurse and I found much in common and began writing to each other. One by one, we have included other health workers in our discussion. There are now six of us, from three different countries, corresponding by email. The challenges we face on the job and in our lives are remarkably similar. We want to build an organization of international health workers.

You might be wondering what six people in three different countries could possibly do. Knowing that you are not alone, that others are struggling with the same rotten system, is essential to staying sane and continuing the fight. That, alone, is priceless. But we want more than that. The relationships we are building today will be the foundation of tomorrow’s solidarity actions.

There is only one world. Economic booms and slumps spill over national borders and ripple around the globe in synchronous waves. Internet technology allows people to communicate from anywhere on the planet in seconds.

To keep us divided, our rulers insist that we are more different than similar. We are discovering that the opposite is true. And in the process, we are beginning to build a very different world based on sharing and cooperation.

For more on this subject read POWER and Powerlessness. Available at www.powerandpowerlessness.com

Where’s the Justice?

by Susan Rosenthal

In 1959, 14-year-old Steven Truscott was sentenced to hang for the murder of 12-year-old Lynne Harper in a small Ontario town. Although his death sentence was commuted, Truscott spent the next ten years in prison.

Truscott always proclaimed his innocence, yet for the next 48 years prosecutors fought every effort to reopen his case.

In 2000 Julian Sher produced an explosive television documentary exposing a conspiracy to convict Truscott: important witnesses were never called to testify; more likely suspects, including a known pedophile, were never questioned; and important leads were kept from the defense, the judge and the jury. Were prosecutors defending the conviction to cover up that conspiracy?

On August 28, 2007, the Ontario Court of Appeal finally acquitted Truscott of murder, but refused to proclaim him innocent. Doing so would imply that Truscott had been maliciously prosecuted.

Richard Moran studied 124 exonerations of U.S. death row inmates between 1973 and 2007. He found that two-thirds of these convictions resulted from "intentional, willful, malicious prosecutions." He writes in the New York Times,

Mistakes are good-faith errors — like taking the wrong exit off the highway, or dialing the wrong telephone number. There is no malice behind them. However, when officers of the court conspire to convict a defendant of first-degree murder and send him to death row, they are doing much more than making an innocent mistake or error. They are breaking the law.

Kenneth Foster

Kenneth Foster Jr. is a victim of malicious prosecution, condemned to die for the 1996 murder of Michael LaHood. The prosecution acknowledges that Foster did not shoot LaHood or actively participate in the slaying. Foster only drove the car in which LaHood's killer was riding on the night of the murder. Nevertheless, the 1974 "Texas Law of Parties" allows the death penalty to be imposed on anyone involved in a crime where a murder occurs, even if the accused is not involved in the murder or even aware that a murder is intended.

A public campaign to save Foster’s life pressured Texas Governor Rick Perry to commute his death sentence hours before the execution was scheduled to take place. This turnaround is an exception, as Richard Moran explains,

Even when a manifestly innocent man is about to be executed, a prosecutor can be dead set against reopening an old case. Since so many wrongful convictions result from official malicious behavior, prosecutors, policemen, witnesses or even jurors and judges could themselves face jail time for breaking the law in obtaining an unlawful conviction.

The Canadian penal system cannot compare with the extreme barbarism of the American system, yet their goals are the same — to incarcerate as many people as necessary to control the "unruly masses."

In Blaming the Victim (1976), William Ryan notes, "The prisoner is the visible symbol of crime contained – the criminal caged and restrained – to give the unwitting citizen the feeling that the cops and jails are preserving his safety."

Defense attorney Clarence Darrow explains that the misnamed "justice" system has nothing to do with justice. It exists to legalize the crimes of the capitalist class. In Crime and Criminals (1902) he writes,

Those men who own the earth make the laws to protect what they have. They fix up a sort of fence or pen around what they have, and they fix the law so the fellow on the outside cannot get in. The laws are really organized for the men who rule the world. They were never organized or enforced to do justice. We have no system for justice, not the slightest in the world.

Darrow defined a criminal as someone with predatory instincts who has insufficient capital to form a corporation.

Corporations can and do ignore the law. General Electric has been convicted of more than 280 counts of contract fraud, yet not a single GE executive sits in jail. Meanwhile, California’s three-strikes law sends petty thieves to jail for life. Gary Ewing got 25 years for stealing three golf clubs, and Leandro Andrade was sentenced to 50 years for stealing nine children’s videotapes.

The French novelist Balzac observed, "Behind every great fortune there is a crime." Yet, the State defines crime only in ways that target the working class.

If you take pencils home from work, that is considered stealing. If the power company raises its rates every month, that is considered business. In 2006, Las Vegas declared it a crime to feed homeless people in public parks. Failing to provide housing for the homeless, jobs for the jobless, medicine for the sick, and food for the hungry are not considered crimes. Businesses can lawfully withhold life’s essentials from those who cannot pay. Where is the justice in this?

In The Rich Get Richer and the Poor Get Prison (2000), Jeffrey Reiman calculates that corporate crimes cost ordinary people more money and cause more deaths than common street crimes. Executives market dangerous products, manufacturers dump toxic chemicals into the environment, and managers plot to destroy jobs and steal pensions.

Unlike many murderers sitting in prison for life, these gentleman bandits, these intelligent, educated men and women who slowly and methodically plan the crimes that wreck the future of untold numbers of people, know exactly what they are doing and who will be hurt. Their crimes of cold, selfish greed reflect, in their own way, even more indifference to life than murder.

The crime of poverty

Those who talk about cracking down on crime never talk about cracking down on the root cause of crime; the capitalist system of organized thievery.

The poorest neighborhoods have similar (high) murder rates, whether they are predominately Black, White or Hispanic. Drug addiction, prostitution, theft, assault and murder are the result of no jobs, no money, no future and no hope.

A 2004 national survey of American cities revealed a direct relationship between unemployment, less education, lower income and serious crime, including robbery, rape and murder. That year, Newton, Massachusetts was rated the safest American city. Camden, Pennsylvania was rated the most dangerous. Why the difference?

Newton’s employment rate was more than five times higher than Camden’s. More than two-thirds of Newton residents had university degrees, compared with only five percent of Camden residents. And the median household income in Newton was more than three times that of Camden’s. The root of crime in Camden is class deprivation. If Camden residents had the same living standards as Newton residents, they would enjoy the same low crime rates.

As the capitalist system sinks deeper into crisis, the greedy people who run society demand more convictions, more prisons, more and faster executions to keep their victims under control. There can never be enough blood to quench their fear of us. Their fear is justified.

We, the majority, have the power to end this criminal social system and create a truly just world. Campaigns to defend the victims of injustice provide a glimpse of that possibility.

For more on this subject, read POWER and Powerlessness, Chapter 10. "Blame the Victim." Available at www.powerandpowerlessness.com