On Raising Class Consciousness: The Status Quo of Madness
On Raising Class Consciousness: The Status Quo of Madness
Reflections on the cost of wealth, the red pill of capitalism, and what it means to be bourgeois.
Recently, some family members invited me to dinner in a (what I would consider) rather fancy restaurant.
I don’t usually frequent such locales and always feel a bit out of place and uncomfortable there — here I am, an anarchist with pretty strong opinions (all supported by facts, naturally), some tattoos, and little money (I was invited, remember?), and there they are with their expensive clothes, generational stock portfolios, golden watches, and bored, fake expressions.
It just feels so… off.
How can there be so many worlds between us?
The nagging feeling in the back of my mind: These people should not exist. Not in this way, they shouldn’t — and I don’t mean them as persons per se, but them as ‘the wealthy.’
Once you’ve delved into some anarchist, communist, and anti-capitalist ideas, critiques, and concepts; once you’ve studied things like our financial system, capitalism, resource depletion, consumerism, climate change, collapse, and so on, you begin to see certain things in an entirely different light. It’s as if a veil that has obscured your perception of the world your entire life is finally lifted, revealing the cold, harsh reality. There are things you see then that you can never unsee or ignore anymore.
And once you’ve read Graeber, Kropotkin, Marx, or whomever, you can never go back — and you do not want to. When presented with the choice, you take the red pill.
Let me explain,
Those people in expensive suits and fancy dresses? You begin to ask yourself: how did these people acquire their wealth? Why are they rich? Who suffered to enable their lavish lifestyles? The diamonds on their rings — don’t they know how those get mined? And why don’t they care?
There is no wealth, no fortune, no empire, that is not built on the sweat, blood, and misery of others — most often workers in far-away nations. Not to speak of generational wealth and the historic factors that enabled it (slavery, colonialism, child labor, and so on) and continue to do so (neo-colonialism, neoliberal exploitation of the Global South, etc.).
You don’t care anymore about where she bought her dress, and that she has an affair with her tennis instructor; you don’t want to know where they went on holidays, or who it is he knows (it’s always some scumbag politician or business guy). You don’t care about their houses, their ridiculous cars, and their misbehaved children in private schools, shielded from the ‘proletariat’ in any possible way. You don’t even want to mingle with these people. They’ve turned into a different species altogether.
And then the waiter brings the wine you’re supposed to be knowledgeable about, and the food — oh yes, the food. The main course that costs more than your weekly groceries and yet leaves you hungry and unsatisfied. Well, you are supposed to order a first course, an intermediate course, and dessert, of course; perhaps a salad, too — how the fuck should I know?
It’s all just status symbols, you know; status symbols all the way down. The food is mainly just for show, as is the ambiente, and the waiter with his impeccable manners; even the conversations carry with them a heavy, almost stifling air of preposterousness. Everything to keep up appearances and separate oneself from the rabble that has to contend with unhealthy fast-food joints and, occasionally, pubs and the like.
How did they acquire their wealth? Was it through hard work? — Hardly, these people lack the calloused hands and other telltale signs of hard workers. Most of them are either very slender or rather fat.
Of course, hard work isn’t only defined by manual toil. That would be a very narrow viewpoint indeed. Maybe these people work sixty or eighty-hour weeks? Maybe they work weekends with hardly any holidays in between?
Yes, some of them do. Still, is that hard work? (shuffling papers around, attending useless meetings, responding to emails, drinking and drugs, occasionally a burn-out or nervous breakdown to break the monotony — I’ve been there, trust me, I speak from experience here).
I would argue that this sort of work, while certainly exhausting and tiring, does not constitute hard work in the sense that it produces anything meaningful or of value to society. I would argue that it doesn’t represent work at all. Rather, it’s another sort of status symbol.
More on bullshit work:
By bullshitting yourself up the corporate ladder, you signal your readiness to: do entirely useless and sometimes outright harmful work (investment bankers, real estate agents, bankers, insurance agents, landlords, politicians, and so on), put up with unjustified hierarchies, arbitrary rules, ridiculous working hours, neglect everything important in life (such as your children), and so on.
And why? — Well, to have the opportunity to become one of them.
In essence, being ‘successful’ in today’s socioeconomic system doesn’t imply being a hard worker (that’s just a great piece of propaganda); it doesn’t even imply being particularly smart (just listen to some of the conversations in this fancy restaurant, or check out Elon Musk’s Twitter page); it merely signals to the rest of the world:
Yes, here is a person that has managed to do very well in a system utterly defined and permeated by greed, selfishness, submission, and a disregard for one’s fellow human beings.
Whenever in doubt, I think of landlords throwing out families with children; or of insurance agents refusing to pay for that old woman’s destroyed house — obliterated in natural disasters that proliferate due to climate change, itself mainly caused by those most wealthy of people; or of bankers squandering the life savings of their clients in risky investments, and then being bailed out by those very clients’ tax money; or of corrupt politicians; or racist police officers — the list goes on and on.
How did it come to this?
Does that all sound a bit arrogant and self-righteous?
Yes, certainly. And I don’t claim to be much better than what is the modern bourgeoisie. In fact, despite living on the lower spectrum of income (teachers don’t get paid much, part-time teachers even less), I am, in many ways, part of it — part of the problem. I live in a wealthy Western nation and my whole standard of living is quite literally enabled by the systematic exploitation of others (in the past and today), and the destruction of most of the earth’s ecosystems.
In fact, every single person who reads this is probably part of the problem. But there is a huge difference between millionaires and billionaires, and those merely trying to live the best life they can in the circumstances presented to them.
It’s not about eating in fancy restaurants every once in a while, it’s about consciousness — class consciousness and everything that entails. Being aware of the problem and working in that direction. And compassion — always about compassion.
Some are more problematic than others.
I’m author, writer, and activist Antonio Melonio, the creator of Beneath the Pavement. If you enjoyed this piece, please consider becoming a paid subscriber here on Substack or over on Patreon. It’s the best way to support Beneath the Pavement and help me put out more and higher-quality content.
If monthly contributions are not your thing (I understand), you can also leave me a tip or some coffee money over on PayPal. Thank you.
What am I doing, you ask? Well, small things; tiny contributions that, at some point, will hopefully make some sort of difference. I’m writing stuff like this — and my stories and novels, of course — and… just trying to survive. Organizing.
Thank you Antonio🙏
Okay, forgive me if I make any mistakes here; I don't know what this website is, but this article has pissed me off so much I created an account to rant about it.
I don't care about the article. I mean whatever blah blah blah wealth is performative proletariat good have you seen office space etc. These critiques sound like they're from some hippy 'zine from the 1970's, and, whatever, fine, we all have our old-school opinions and beliefs we learned once in our youths and never lost. But, dude, this is terrible writing.
Like, look, I'm not unfamiliar with anarchist politics and theory, but Jesus Christ dude take a writing course or something. I didn't laugh. I didn't even snort. This is a completely uncharismatic blog post. None of these jokes are funny, or well constructed. It feels like a simulacrum of real writing, like a derivative of a bygone aesthetic sense of cynicism that was never funny to begin with, the pen of a bad writer making halfhearted winey critique on why "rich people eat stupid food," which is impressive in this age of derivative bad writing made by no writer. This is so bad it passes the Turing test.
This blog has pissed me off so much, that, in the spirit of public service, lets go through a paragraph of yours and try to improve it.
> Those people in expensive suits and fancy dresses? You begin to ask yourself: how did these people acquire their wealth? Why are they rich? Who suffered to enable their lavish lifestyles? The diamonds on their rings — don’t they know how those get mined? And why don’t they care?
Okay, so, first glaring thing here is turns of phrase: "expensive suits and fancy dresses;" "lavish lifestyles." Other, more wrote imagery as well: "diamonds on their rings." A more minor gripe, but overcommon constructions: "acquire [...] wealth." As a reader, as I enter this paragraph, I am not reading anything new. Anyone who has spent time among the angst-ridden anti-capitalist youth of 20 years ago will have read these exact words, often in the same order, communicating the same idea. Obviously, very few ideas are rare, very few ideas are new, or novel. That's fine, what isn't fine is this paragraph. There is nothing here. It has no meat.
Word count is important here, and boy are you blowing it on useless shit. Ask yourself, what is each sentence attempting to communicate? How do these sentences build on each other to form a paragraph? Lets go sentence by sentence here.
1) Those people in expensive suits and fancy dresses?
This sentence does nothing. It's not complete. There is no subject. All it does it set up the subject for the next sentence, something which the next sentence doesn't use because of the second person reflexive and the fact that you have to redefine "those people," anyway.
2) You begin to ask yourself: how did these people acquire their wealth?
The best sentence in this paragraph, but the use of second person along with that particular question isn't going to fit neatly onto most readers. It's weak, though nice use of a colon? Still, please cut down on useless words. The question clause could be cut down by 1/3rd: "how did they acquire wealth?" Alternatively, "why are the wealthy wealthy?"
3) Why are they rich?
A near complete copy of the previous sentence idea. Nothing is added here but using more potent language you could have used in the last sentence.
4) Who suffered to enable their lavish lifestyles?
You keep switching tenses and distances here. Sentence 1 used "those," sentence 2 uses "these" and present tense, sentence 3 present, sentence 4 past. 5 and 6 present. As far as ideas go, fine, but please phrase it in a way that makes you sound older than 14.
5) The diamonds on their rings — don’t they know how those get mined?
Back to present, but more egregiously, completely wrote. Also, somehow, you managed to take the em dash and use it poorly. Impressive.
6) And why don’t they care?
By this point I think the reader's eyes would be bleeding. Now, look, I am not an advocate of prescriptive grammar, but when you break grammar rules, it's to attract attention to a sentence or an idea. Starting sentences with a coordinating conjunction is a very potent way of doing this because you have the capital "A" in "And" to tell the reader "hey, look over here, what I'm about to say is important." It quite literally stands out next to the other letters around it, especially because you have all this additional black space from the period "[..]. And [...]." The thing is, when you snap the reader's attention like that, you need to make sure what you're about to tell them is fucking fire; I mean like, off the fucking wall good; a sentence so good they're going to laugh, chuff, or reread in astonishment. "And why don’t they care?" is not that. That especially suffers from being rote. That (and variants in the second person) is a very common construction. Further, you're burning word count for no gain, this sentence would be stronger as "Why don't they care?"
This paragraph could be one sentence and communicate one of it's ideas the same, an example
> The wealthy are performatively blind to the shape of their extraction, ignoring the ways in which the suffering of the global south subsidizes their luxury purchases.
The one good thing you have here is a strong sense of voice. Even without your use italics, these sentences have clear tones and inflection points. The problem is that voice is annoying as shit.
You are going to live rent free in my head for the rest of my life. It's going to be even funnier when I find out you're 26 and failed to launch.