obsoletepolitics:

politicoolio:

queeranarchism:

I hate it when revolutionaries oppose state benefits on the grounds that they would delay the revolution by making the poor ‘dependent on the state’. That’s not how reality works. 

If I’m unemployed without benefits, 99% of my day is spend on finding ways to get food, finding ways to pay the gas, finding ways to not get evicted, dealing with the legal consequences of the illegal things I had to do to get food and gas and a home, dealing with the emotional consequences of the things I had to do to get food and gas and a home, etc. Being overwhelmed. being hungry. being cold. 

If I’m unemployed with good benefits, I have food, gas, a home. As a result I have time and energy to go to organizing meetings and protests. I have energy to be a support system for others. I have some spare change to buy the tools I need for activism. If the tools of resistance that I chose are illegal, I have energy to deal with the consequences, to find legal aid, to take a few punches and get back up. 

Life without money is extremely exhausting to the point of killing people and you don’t magically grow a support system when you lose your benefits. Communities where most people are starving rarely grow strong support systems, they often fall apart because no one has the physical or mental energy to do the work of community building and there is not enough strength left in the community to uphold a support system.  

The revolution isn’t a desperate hurdling forward of starving masses using their last bits of energy to overthrow the state. Whoever told you that had a horrible romanticization of poverty and revolution stuck in their had. We fight better when we’re not starving. We build independency better when we’re not starving. And we can best throw of the last shackles of the state when our not starving hands have build an independent support system strong enough to keep us alive. It’s really that simple. 

Isn’t this also why capitalism depends on a (large?) wealth inequality?

If the workers are kept oppressed and/or poor then they don’t have the money or time (aka the means to get materials and am education) to organize into unions and organizations that can pressure or change the government.

Yes, absolutely. In an American context, neoliberalism and the greater economic control that it afforded elites was, in large part, a response to the 1960s and the various popular and social movements that occurred during it – which were, in turn, the result of material inequalities being comparatively narrow by contrast against much of capitalism’s history. There’s a reason they called it the ‘Golden Age of Capitalism.’

Labor unions were strong, economic controls were tight, and the postwar economy was still going strong. Therefore, it was felt by a number of economic elites that socialist influence over the United States had grown too strong, and that a concerted effort was required in order to suppress it. As a result, you see weaker wages, weaker unions, suppression of socialist ideology, growing inequality, and less and less of a safety net.

These were all designed to weaken the bargaining position of workers and centralize capitalist control over the economy. These things were absolutely necessary in order to preserve capitalism in the face of growing popular power and an unprecedented degree of political and material equality; it meant, specifically, that these trends all had to be reversed.

So yeah – benefits are important, in this context. There’s a reason that the ones that remain largely depend upon making people jump through exhausting hoops, or upon maintaining conditions of living that are degrading, exhausting, and punishing – their primary use, from the state’s perspective, is as a tool of control.