The endpoint of Materialism in the U.S.

America is at an impasse at this point that I doubt has any clean or amicable solution. The robust welfare state of the 60s has been replaced with a level immiseration and income inequality only comparable to the Gilded Age. A pandemic is sweeping through the U.S. affecting us like no other countries on Earth. This is because of a lack of funding for testing, and a failure of the free market to provide the basic necessities for the lower class to survive during this crisis. The bureaucracy has been completely hollowed out by private industry where now it only functions to maintain corporate leverage with tax dollars. To me, all these things spell out an end of an empire. One, which like all those in the past, is failing to address its glaring contradictions. Choosing to maintain the status quo over creating a better more sustainable country. So what happens now?

The lynchpin of the problems this country faces lies in its faulty economics. Like it’s predecessors in feudalism and slavery, capitalism fails to reconcile class conflict especially during a crisis. It’s the fixation on higher profits at the expense of everyone and everything around it makes it a dangerous force which cannibalizes society. If we are to have a chance as a nation of surviving deeper into the 21st century without completely disintegrating, we will need to reorganize the way we handle these industries. Transitioning to a worker-run and operated enterprise system with a state infrastructure that can properly provide for every citizen’s material needs would create a system built for stability over exponential growth. Proletarian control rather than crippling wage slavery. The state-run industry turned the Soviet Union into the second-largest economy in the world, while maintaining good standard of living for all people. The Mondragon Corporation in Spain which is a network of co-ops managed to survive an economic crisis that ruined many other businesses in Spain. This form of the organization nor only works but is much more efficient than the “free market”. The next question is, how do we change the current order that benefits from the degradation of the worker.

Because capitalism requires sustained exploitation and degradation of the working class antagonisms between the elite and the workers will only get worse. And as we see all over the country the battle lines have already been set, the state using their tax-funded paramilitary force and protesters with nothing left to lose fighting for a better existence in this country. The ruling class is nervous and they should be, they have taken everything from the worker and left them in a position where if the proletariat doesn’t fight back they will be paupers. 32 percent of households were unable to pay their mortgages this month and 40 percent of all renters are due to be evicted. With that many people who already had little wealth being kicked out on the street, there will only be more civil unrest and disobedience. Whether they like it or not the capitalist order has reached its endpoint. And as Marx said “The proletarians have nothing to lose but their chains. They have a world to win.”

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