Besides the automobile there is the television. The post-modern bourgeoisie have reversed the propaganda strategy of all previous ruling classes. Instead of keeping the working class in an ignorance of lack of mental stimulus and mental inactivity, it floods them with "information" and mental stimuli distracting from class struggle tasks to the point of stupification Instead of the idiocy of rural life, there is mesmerization by information saturation (the opposite of idiocy) of media virtual life. The working class is sleep waking like children so glued to television they only hear speech to them as through a haze.
I interject below
>>> Jim heartfield wrote,
Doug and Charles raise the issue of the exclusivity of the suburbs
I did some research on suburbanisation in the US for Kofi Buenor Hadjor's great book Another America: The politics of race and blame (south End Press, 1995). When I first looked at the question of white flight, I, like Doug, thought of the suburbs as an essentially exclusivist development. And so they were: its is undeniable that the HOLC policies favoured the development of an informal apartheid. And, as Kevin Phillips gloated in the Emerging Republican Majority, this was a formation that favoured the right in politics.
But the more I looked at it the more obvious it was to me that there was something else going on in the discussion of the suburbs. The evidence suggests that America's suburbs are predominantly white, but also that they are populated by America's white working class.
> Charles interjects:
I have no doubt that the suburbs are predominantly working class, because by my definition of working class 85-90% of the whole population is working class. American cities are majority working class too. So, the suburbs are not more working class than the cities. What you have in Detroit and most places is a few suburbs that everybody knows are rich, and the rest are poorer. In Detroit, the city is higher percentage working class than the majority working class suburbs
Jim continues
In a way these are fantasy developments. Whites fled the urban jungle, but they also brought it with them. In the minds of those who were moving out of the cities, the problem with the neighbourhood going downhill might well have been one of 'too many blacks'. But that was a self-delusion. Social impoverishment is not exclusive to blacks. Many of the older suburbs now are solidly working class districts, even run-down. People move out of the older suburbs in the way that they moved out of the cities. Suburban flight leap-frogged its way across the country, because the truth was that the suburbanites were running away from themselves, from their own degraded social conditions.
I became uneasy with the hostile characterisation of the suburbs as inveterately racist and conservative during the 1992 election campaign. Then the Nation wrote this warning against Clinton: 'There is a giddy enthusiasm among those who endorsed the neo-liberal strategy as they watch the white, so-called middle class, culturally conservative voters, previously enamoured of Reagan and Bush, flock to the Democratic fold' (9 November 1992). Now, all the fears about neo-liberalism make good sense, but what's all that about 'culturally conservative voters'? Isn't it the job of radicals to change their minds. All this for me is very redolent of the way that radicals over here became increasingly alienated from the class of so-called C2s (that's upper working class) 'Essex man' who was supposed to have been bought by Margaret Thatcher's 'authoritarian populism'.
Chas. - I think it is good to warn against unconscious or creeping anti-proletarian prejudice in middle class radicals. However, it is not a few radicals but masses of working class Black people who have prenounced there to be an unacceptable level of racism in the working class white suburbanites. First of all there was the white flight in which millions openly exposed their hideous prejudice against us. Then there was cross district bussing which became a cause celebre led often by working class individuals. These days Black autoworkers are fighting KKK expressions in plants. One union local in a Western suburb had someone who openly used KKK propaganda elected president about 3-4 years ago. The racism among white workers is not universal but it is critically disarming of the class in its fight with the bourgeoisie
Jim- My fear then is this: that behind the radical rehtoric about racist suburbanites is just a straight-forward hostility to the masses. Yes their views are not spontaneously radical, but then whose are? Yes they drive about in big cars, but what's so wrong with working class mobility? Yes, the suburbs are overwhelmingly white - but wasn't that as much to do with policy as with personal prejudice?
Chas. As I said , it IS masses who are calling suburbanites racist - the masses of working class Black people in Detroit and L.A. and Chicago and N.Y.
This is a stone empirical fact based on my long term participant observation in this "culture", "interviewing many native informants" , being a native , etc.
All individual personal prejudice is an important problem, the main political aspect of the racism of white masses or workers is it critically divides the working class. Divide and rule, divide and rule. The white workers don't get it. So of course it is the policy. It is the number one policy of the American bourgeoisie since they came into existence.
Black and white unite and fight is the only answer, but how are Black workers going to unite with white workers who blatantly "flew away" in hideous prejudice against us ?
Rural Depopulation
On another related thread, the depopulation of the rural areas is part of the long term process of destruction of the "family farm" in the U.S. as part of monopolization of agriculture. The rural population and agricultural workers as a percentage of the whole has been dropping since at least the twenties in the U.S. ;and % of rural workers has been dropping since the thirties in Austria, Belgium, Canada, Denmark France, Great Britain, Holland, Italy, Norway, Sweden, Switzerland, USA and Germany ;_Contemporary Capitalism and the Middle Classes by Nadel International 1992. The figures on rural population dropping may not imply that the suburbs were growing from migration from rural areas instead of urban areas. The farmworkers may have moved to the city also. There are direct studies of definite migration from the city to the suburbs by masses, which have to be working class, because there aren't enough masses of bourgeoisie and petit bourgeoisie.
Cars
On another post thread, actually I don't feel particularly isolated or alienated due to riding in my car so much. In fact, like Russ , I either enjoy riding or at least I am rarely tense, or upset , or stressed. Alienation is rife, so I won't go into it much, although I would say television is isolating and "passivating" (makes masses passive). I do think that, as I look at the historical sweep of the thing, of the potential forms of mass transportation in the 10's, 20's and 30's ,car system structure is more isolating and less collective than the others and the bourgeois decisionmakers saw that as a plus. The biggest factor was direct profit. On cars directly , we should fight for no PLANNED OBSOLESCENCE. What does Jim say to that ? I guess you are for more efficient cars, you say. What about electric cars ? Also, cars are the most or one of the most dangerous instrumenalities in our environment. Most of the people killed or maimed in auto accidents are WORKING CLASS. (see above). There is no reason not to demand an infinite engineering quest for more and more safety on behalf of the working class.
Finally, I agree with Jim's applying commodity fetish analysis to car culture.
It may be the ultimate example. Cars very much come alive and have personalities. People treat these objects as subjects.
It's hard not to get at least a pet like attachment to the thing. It gives you such critical service. It is the mass owned means of personal production. It is a sort of faux reversal of the wage-laborer not owning any means of production.
Charles