On Fascism... Pt 2 - Materialism

Illusion is the most tenacious weed in the collective consciousness; history teaches, but it has no pupils.
Antonio Gramsci

Last time, we left off at very rich people paying their governments to destabilize countries from the Global South so they could have access to natural resources, cheap labour, and intellectual talent at will, while also promoting an ethical and moral life in their own countries, and the protagonist of the story starting to question whether the kid from the coffee shop was really at fault here.

Material reality, the things that we touch and see everyday, the objects and people we interact with, the smells, the textures, the balance in our bank account, that problematic workmate, the flat tire, the snow, the sun, you get the picture. That is what forms our everyday life and our living conditions, and as much as I'd love to be by the pool in a warm place, turns out that my reality feels more like -27°C and snowy without much option for doing much more than drinking some tea and reading books. (Which sounds kind of amazing nonetheless! Because privilege.)

This might sound trivial, but material reality for some people is the same -27°C but trying to fit in a camping tent that is broken from overuse, trying to keep warm in random bus shelters, burn barrels, or just not even thinking about that, and giving into substances that can help mitigate the pain, at which point there's no room in anyone's mind to think about a pool, or books, or tea.

Some other people, across the water, are just being born amidst the rubble because their families were condemned to misery by virtue of existing and being autochthonous to a land where the bosses want to put hotels on. No choices have been made by that person being born, yet they're condemned to a life full of suffering and despair and there is no picking yourself by the bootstraps here. There are no bootstraps, or indeed boots.

Photo by Ash Hayes / Unsplash

All that to say that what we are presented with is what we have to work with, nothing more and nothing less. And once this truth is discovered, the rest becomes a lot easier to grasp, problems start becoming symptoms, and the causes of these symptoms get progressively larger and easier to identify, albeit more difficult to confront, and the conditions for this problem to arise didn't happen overnight, the material conditions for today's global pandemonium have been brewing through history, some repeating events, manufactured consent, and most important of all, loads and loads of apathy from people who could see, but chose to ignore.

Understanding our material reality also should help us understand and identify our privilege, which is by far the most troublesome of all concepts spoken about here, because without those ideals, all those talents, blessings and accomplishments start losing the meaning we had given them. Turns out that having the money to afford to go to a prestigious university for a diploma that can dictate what places you're allowed to walk into, isn't you being better than someone else, but someone whose material conditions allowed for it to happen; and most of us enjoy these privileges without having to lift a finger.

Being born with a specific skin colour, or in a country that guarantees your rights and has the resources to ensure you survive early childhood, or family wealth built for generations on land that once belonged to other peoples, housing, transportation, not having to guess whether there would be food on the table or not, etc. You get the point, and my intention is not to make anyone feel guilty (hell, this is also part of the superstructure of idealism), but instead it is to help you understand that what could be a walk in the park for you, could feel like running a double-marathon without shoes for someone else, and it isn't either one's fault; it is however the responsibility of the former to understand their privilege and how the conditions were different for both.

Back to the material world, and the bosses building hotels, and problematic workmates, these aren't just static entities, the problematic workmate isn't just a figure that appeared out of nowhere, but instead this is also someone who has been let down by the system, probably suffering from economic conditions due to low wages or job insecurity, the prospect of a robot coming to take their job, having bills to pay, having fallen into consumption by committing future earnings and falling into debt, health risks from questionable food and lack of exercise, both forced in by a machine that does not allow them to slow down, and contrast that with the bosses who are rushing to tear down permanent hoses owned by those native to the land, just to replace them with foreign structures to be rented out to new temporary tenants, who simply have more capital to add back to the system; this friction is where history happens.

Photo by Adrian "Rosco" Stef / Unsplash

The person sleeping in a tent during a winter night, whose situation is often presented as one of bad luck, bad habits, and not being able to control themselves, when in reality the housing market has been commodified to the point that people can no longer afford to live in the places they had been for as long as they could remember, along with the well documented introduction of drugs into society by the establishment to stoke a metaphorical fire that isn't running out any time soon, and that, along with the prison system (for which I will have plenty of words in the future), serve as a warning for others to stand in line and continue their role as a cog in the machine.

Acknowledging privilege, then, is the first step in a more radical project: the deliberate, collective reorganization of our material world. It means looking at the diploma, the stable address, the guaranteed meal, not as personal trophies, but as social resources that should be available to all. Our responsibility is to work toward a world where such things are not privileges, but rights. This work takes countless forms, from the hyper-local to the global, but it is united by a single, material aim: to dismantle the machinery that turns homes into hotel investments, and people into disposable cogs, and to build in its place an economy that starts from the premise of meeting human needs. Your unique position gives you a unique lever. Pull it! Whether it's in your workplace, your community, or in the struggle to reshape the rules themselves, act to change the conditions. We didn't choose the starting line, but we can choose to fight for a course where everyone has boots, and where the finish line is a decent life for all. The warmth in your room can be a reason to open the door, not to bolt it shut.

I will be sharing my own personal journey of political consciousness next!

If you have made it this far, once again, we should be friends! drop me a line at [email protected] and make sure you're subscribed to this blog so we can continue this story together!