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PART 9: THE DEATH OF THE COMMUNITY
My grandmother was a district nurse in a town in the Welsh Valleys called Aberbargoed. Here's what it looks like and where it is:
My grandmother was a district nurse in a town in the Welsh Valleys called Aberbargoed. Here's what it looks like and where it is:
She passed away in 2018, but it was only after she died did I start to learn about her place in Aberbargoed.
It was not uncommon for people in her street to, whenever their kid had a cut or a scrape, to say "Go and see Sister Fox".
It was not uncommon for people in her street to, whenever their kid had a cut or a scrape, to say "Go and see Sister Fox".
She knew everyone on her street, and everyone on the street knew everyone else. I was told that she would even get Christmas presents for the entire street, and as soon as she came home late from a shift on Xmas Eve she'd immediately be back out delivering these presents.
I remember to talking with my neighbour, who is in her nineties, telling me that when she was growing up she knew everyone on her street personally.
My father grew up on a farm, and he told me that when he was growing up he knew everyone personally who lived within a five-mile radius.
My mother grew up too in Aberbargoed, and so well did everyone know each other that their dog, Shandy, would ride the buses into town and people knew whose *dog* it was.
As I heard these stories, I contrasted it with my own experiences growing up.
As I heard these stories, I contrasted it with my own experiences growing up.
The only people I knew on my street are those who I was in school with. Beyond that, I knew maybe one household. No one else.
In hearing these stories, it dawned on me that my neighbour, my mother, father, grandmother - they all had a more intimate relationship with their community than I, or the majority of my generation, did.
When I thought about why this was, I could arrive at a handful of conclusions:
During the Industrial Revolution and the process of primitive accumulation (capital becoming concentrated in urban centres) that occurred as capitalism came into fruition, factories and mines were established. And then the towns followed suit around these factories and mines.
What this resulted in is a few things:
Most of the (male) workforce in these towns found jobs in the same place; in these factories and these mines.
They laboured side-by-side, every day. They came to know each other. Through that, they came to know each other's families.
Most of the (male) workforce in these towns found jobs in the same place; in these factories and these mines.
They laboured side-by-side, every day. They came to know each other. Through that, they came to know each other's families.
As the Sixties and Seventies came along, this too became the case for the women workforce too. Mothers and fathers knew their neighbours, their children went to school together, they spent weekends and weekdays together
This, ultimately, created a feeling of community intimacy.
This, ultimately, created a feeling of community intimacy.
This was a threat to capital. When people work side-by-side every day, talk to each other every day - it makes forming unions all the easier. Not only does it make forming them easier, but it makes the union more effective.
If your workplace went on strike, when you know personally the people on strike, you know their wives and husbands, their kids go to school with yours, you are far, far less likely to undermine them all by crossing the picket.
It made for strong communities, and strong workers' movements.
The factories, the mines - they were the beating heart of these communities. These were the focal points that held communities together so tightly.
But then, the economic crises of the Seventies hit.
The factories, the mines - they were the beating heart of these communities. These were the focal points that held communities together so tightly.
But then, the economic crises of the Seventies hit.
In Keynesian economics, which had dominated the imperial capitalist world from 1945 to the mid-1970s, there are two points most focal to our topic here:
1) Their view of the relationship between inflation and unemployment
2) The Labour-Capital compromise
1) Their view of the relationship between inflation and unemployment
2) The Labour-Capital compromise
The first point I'll explain. The Keynesian view is that when unemployment goes down, and the economy is growing, then businesses will try and test making more profit by raising prices. If they succeed and they don't drive away demand, every other business follows suit.
Inevitably, this results in inflation with the total cost of goods all over rising. This sounds bad on its face, but the Keynesian solution to this was the Labour-Capital compromise.
With the Laissez-Faire capitalism of the 1920s and the resulting 10-year Depression that followed still fresh in everyone's minds, the zeitgeist in the US and Western Europe was that we can't go back to how we were in the Twenties, that resulted in the hell of the Thirties
But we also don't want to follow the model of the Soviet Union (the only other major example of an alternative at the time). We have to seek a compromise, where neither capital nor labour run amok. This means we keep a capitalist mode of production, but with many caveats
This caveats included heavy market regulation, high top bracket income taxation (as high as 80% on the richest) and, very importantly, union presence in the workplace.
We want to grow the economy, but this results in inflation.
We want to grow the economy, but this results in inflation.
But - inflation is only a problem if wages don't grow. As long as wages keep pace with or outpace the rate of inflation, we're peachy. And for thirty years, this worked*.
*For white people
*For white people
The rule was - if inflation is going up, unemployment is going down and the economy is growing. If inflation is going down and prices are falling, its because unemployment is rising and businesses slash prices to try and meet the reduced purchasing power of unemployed people.
This Keynesian rule that there was an inverse relationship between inflation and unemployment died rapidly in the 1970s.
The message was driven home in the 1970s that the economic growth and (relative) prosperity of Western Europe and the US was reliant on a constant supply of cheap oil.
So, when the US and Western Europe backed Israel in the Arab-Israeli War, the response of OPEC was to embargo all oil exports to the countries aiding Israel. This resulted in economic crises across these nations, and that golden Keynesian rule was broken:
Unemployment AND inflation were rising. Things were exacerbated by the Iranian Revolution which also reduced further the supply of cheap oil*.
*It should not be noted that the supply of this cheap oil was a product of imperialism.
*It should not be noted that the supply of this cheap oil was a product of imperialism.
The Keynesian consensus was shattered. And out of it arose the biggest seizure of power by one class over another since the various socialist revolutions around the world. Except this one was the capitalist class seizing more power.
Paul Volcker, chair of the Federal Reserve, took probably the biggest and largest step towards a staple of neoliberal thinking - Monetarism.
Monetarism is the idea, fundamentally, that it is more important to control inflation than unemployment - even if it causes unemployment in the process.
And that's what Volcker did. Overnight, Volker hiked Federal Reserve interest rates to 20%.
And that's what Volcker did. Overnight, Volker hiked Federal Reserve interest rates to 20%.
The supply of capital dried up. Banks stopped lending. Jimmy Carter pleaded with Volcker to lower rates, but he refused. Unemployment soared. Out of this arose two of the most influential figures in the establishment of neoliberalism: Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher.
Adopting the ideas of the growing neoliberal movement that had arisen out of the ideas of Friedrich Hayek, Milton Friedman and other economists from Chicago University, they advocated leaving the Keynesian model. Trickle-down economics became the new modus operandi.
Far from the UK or US being the first crack at neoliberalism, this was first implemented in Pinochet's Chile.
Slash top tax rates, slash capital gains tax, deregulate, and, vitally, change the nature of the economy. Liberalise trade, free up movement for labour and capital
Slash top tax rates, slash capital gains tax, deregulate, and, vitally, change the nature of the economy. Liberalise trade, free up movement for labour and capital
With the growth of free trade, these factories and mines that once were the lynchpins of community intimacy were uprooted and moved to locations where, for many different reasons, capital could get away with exploiting labour more.
My grandmother told me a story about this. Aberbargoed was a mining town. For those who don't know, many battles took place between the unions and the UK Government throughout the 1970s and 1980s, the largest of which being between Thatcher and the National Union of Mineworkers
Thatcher knew that the NUM was preparing to go on another strike, and so they began stockpiling coal to outlast the striking miners. She sent police to batter striking miners in middle and north England as well as South Wales, using brute force to break the workers.
The argument on its face was that this was all because coal mining was becoming unsustainable and unprofitable (a lie, it was still profitable at the time). The real reason was because the unions represented the largest threat to the neoliberal revolution - they had to be broken.
Thatcher defeated the NUM after a year long strike over closing mines, and my nan watched as men who worked in the mines who she'd known all her life lost their dignity on her doorstep as they begged for spare food, tears in their eyes.
The workers were defeated, and have never recovered to their previous strength. The factories and the mines closed, moved abroad where they could get away with paying people pennies an hour. And what followed was an atomisation of the workforce.
The work in towns dried up, where sons and daughters used to have guaranteed work in their local industry, now they had to commute to urban centres for work. No longer did they work side-by-side with their neighbours. Over time, people stopped knowing their neighbours' names.
If you split the workers up, you kill community intimacy. You make it harder for unions to form, and so you can get away with conjuring up increasingly degrading and unstable forms of work.
Flexi and zero hours contracts, where you're guaranteed a tiny amount or no hours of work a week and you are entirely reliant on being called upon by your boss as and when they need you. You can't plan for the future, you can't get a mortgage on your contract hours.
They're not workers anymore - they're "independent contractors", and as of such, because they "work for themselves" they have no labour rights. You foster increased competition between workers; far from forming unions of solidarity with each other, they view each other as rivals.
The workforce was no longer concentrated together. It became atomised; Deliveroo riders, Uber drivers - they don't know the other workers who work in their area. And far from being their allies, they're challenging your ability to make a living by stealing customers!
And here lies the community; shattered to pieces by the combination of people commuting away from their towns to urban centres for work, by increasingly unstable forms of work and by the destruction of public services that once brought people together.
I want you to imagine the idea that you go and knock on the door of someone in your area you don't know for no other reason than you want to get to know them and their family. You do that these days and you're liable to be branded a creep.
We have become alienated from each other in our localities - they're no longer communities. We don't know the names of everyone in our area like Generation Z and prior did.
I don't believe it's a coincidence that this destruction coincided with depression becoming the most commonly treated ailment on the British NHS, nor the loneliness epidemic that plagues people of all generations. Couple this with the gutting of mental health services...
...and people are left to suffer, with only their closest confidants acting as support networks. No wonder people are lonely; they're islands within their own localities.
This has reached it's zenith with COVID-19.
This has reached it's zenith with COVID-19.
Working from home is the completion of the atomisation of the workforce. It's arrived by accident, instead of by design, but I don't believe it will disappear. When the balance sheets come in for many companies, they'll find it's cheaper to keep workers at home rather...
...than pay for office space, utilities, equipment, etc. Many of the people who have been moved to working from home during this pandemic will not be returning to the workplace after this. Your house is your workplace now.
Make no mistake - this will be sold as a good thing. You can avoid the morning commute now! Have an extra hour in bed! No more hustle and bustle or traffic jams - work in your pyjamas! Nevermind that we're going to force you to use software that will monitor your productivity...
...down to the minute, checking whether you're in front of your camera and watching what you're looking at on your own laptop screen (this will likely also accompany surveillance of private messages to combat potential unionising efforts).
And maybe for some people this will be an improvement. But when you spend five days a week in your house, and then spend your weekend in the same place, that's a recipe for the days to blur together very rapidly. And just as people came to hate their office cubicles...
For the environment and the work they associated with it, so too will people begin to dread certain rooms and spots of their own home. Neoliberalism will have cracked the way to get their employees to sleep at work; move work home with them - permanently.
This is a recipe for mass depression and loneliness, further alienation from other workers and members of your community. Neoliberalism is threatening to make Stay At Home the new normal - completing the atomisation of the workforce and the destruction of the community.
I wish I had more optimism about this. But right now, as I think about this, I am feeling very lost about the way to fight this. I have both an enduring faith in the creativity and talent of people to fight back, but also a feeling of being lost in the wilderness as to how.
Unlike the climate thread or many others where I have naively purported to have such grand ideas as to how to tackle such things, I am at a loss as to how we fight this atomisation and revive community intimacy.
