Episode 273 of RevolutionZ addresses Class (The PMC or as I call it, the Coordinator Class) and left organizing in the Degrowth movement. The episode is built around an essay by Emma River-Roberts, a Degrowth activist, working class organizer, and founder of The Working Class Climate Alliance, which is an affiliate of the Post Growth Institute. The article is on ZNet and I offer it here and also some comments on it because I believe the article has bearing not only on Degrowth organizing, but really on all organizing for a better world.
Episode 273 of RevolutionZ addresses Class (The PMC or as I call it, the Coordinator Class) and left organizing in the Degrowth movement. The episode is built around an essay by Emma River-Roberts, a Degrowth activist, working class organizer, and founder of The Working Class Climate Alliance, which is an affiliate of the Post Growth Institute. The article is on ZNet and I offer it here and also some comments on it because I believe the article has bearing not only on Degrowth organizing, but really on all organizing for a better world.
Hello, my name is Michael Albert and I am the host of the podcast that's titled Revolution Z. I hope you will take a moment to visit our Patreon page at patreoncom slash revolutionz, or our revolutionz archive page, which is on znetworkorg, as Znet is our sponsoring organization. There you can access all past episodes and learn how to get automatic delivery via podcast apps, and if you are a regular listener, viewer, I wonder if you would consider recommending this podcast to others you know or work with. In any event, this is our 273rd consecutive episode and, like last week, this week too, I am going to present an article, but also interject my own comments spontaneously, as I do so, and in this case too, like last time, what I am going to present was not written by me, but by a woman named Emma River Roberts, who is a founder of the Working Class Climate Alliance and affiliate of the Post-Growth Institute. She begins her essay that you can also read for yourself on znet and that's titled Degrowth and the Professional Managerial Class as follows it may have taken the degrowth movement the best part of 50 years and vocal alignment with echosocialism to actually start talking about class politics, but we are here now. At least this novel interest has brought with it a barrage of questions pertaining to how working class consciousness and power can be rebuilt from the ground up, elements that are necessary preconditions to our mass mobilization and emancipation. However, helping to achieve this will forever remain out of the movement's capabilities unless it begins to critically reflect upon the social dynamics of the movement itself, that is, that it is mostly comprised of individuals belonging to the Professional Managerial Class and the specific challenges that this creates in regards to the working class and movement building. I interject the Professional Managerial Class emerged as a concept with that name in the writing of Barbara and John Ehrenreich. In particular, there was an essay around which we then created a South End Press title. I worked there at the time and we put out what we called a controversy series, a book title between labor and capital. This was in 1978. Regular listeners to Revolution Z will know that I, along with Robin Hinell, also contributed a piece to that book in which we call this class between labor and capital the coordinator class.
Speaker 1:In any case, Emma Roberts continues and says in her book Bridging the Class Divide. Linda Stout observes that organizations and movements often fall apart because they fail to organize across class lines. She stresses that organizing across class lines doesn't just entail bringing in a greater diversity of people, but actively working to create the conditions that enable these diverse groups to work together. In other words, consideration must be explicitly given to not only the classed differences that arise in matters such as disparate preferences for communication styles, but also to the existing state of relations between different groups. In cases where these existing state of relations are contentious to any degree, steps must be taken to ascertain what the root cause of these issues are and how this can be remediated. Otherwise, collaboration across groups will most likely be transient and subsequently ineffective at best, non-existent at worst. Roberts then answers that call saying that the existing state of relations between the working class and the PMC or the coordinator class are, broadly speaking, ambivalent at best.
Speaker 1:As highlighted by Catherine Liu in Virtue Hoarders the case against the professional managerial class, the working classes continue to be treated with nothing but contempt. So now Roberts quotes Liu Quote the professional managerial class has been fighting a class war, not against capitalists or capitalism, but against the working classes. They still believe themselves to be the heroes of history, fighting to defend innocent victims against their evil victimizers. But the working class is not a group they find worth saving because, by PMC standards, they do not behave properly. They are either disengaged politically or too angry to be civil. Liberal members of the credentialed classes love to use the word empower when they talk about people, but the use of that word objectifies the recipients of their help while implying that they, those people, have no access to power without them. Roberts goes on. Of course, this doesn't imply to the entire demographic, however, enough of them have and continue to behave in this way, that it's become a quintessential form of working class struggle.
Speaker 1:We continue to be stereotyped in the media, documentaries, social media, by academics, environmental activists, those in professions they deem to be superior to ours. Our dialects and languages continue to be penalized and stigmatized. Our sense of humor is flagged as inappropriate. Our appearance is seen as something to be laughed at. Even our homes are labeled as grossly inferior and inhabited by society's worst. I interject those phrases in Roberts' article are all links to sources.
Speaker 1:Roberts is not addressing why this group exists, what its actual position is, why it is a class, etc. She is instead talking about the situation it confronts in life and how it is treated. Roberts continues, a working class writer and activist, telling what her experiences of the matter are, she writes, we're excluded from actively participating in civil society organizations and we know that unless we make ourselves palatable in PMC spaces, that is, unless we downplay our working classness and try to present ourselves as middle class, we'll probably be treated like second class citizens In the eyes of others. Our differences mean that we're unworthy of respect in all its forms, legitimizing our systemic and social exclusions from participation in mainstream society and ruthlessly tearing every single component of our cultures, values and practices to shreds in the process. I interject John Lennon as one of the very few to address in popular culture what Roberts is relaying, sort of the exception. That proves the point I think saying about this in his song Work and Class Hero, whose lyrics are not perfect politically but they are very revealing, quote as soon as you're born, they make you feel small by giving you no time instead of it all. Till the pain is so big you feel nothing at all.
Speaker 1:A working class hero is something to be. A working class hero is something to be. They hurt you at home and they hit you at school. They hate you if you're clever and they despise a fool. Till you're so fucking crazy you can't follow their rules. A working class hero is something to be. A working class hero is something to be when they've tortured and scared you for 20-odd years, then they expect you to pick a career when you can't really function, your soulful of fear. A working class hero is something to be. A working class hero is something to be. Keep you doped with religion and sex and TV and you think you're so clever and classless and free, but you're still fucking peasants, as far as I can see. A working class hero is something to be. A working class hero is something to be. There's room at the top there telling you still, but first you must learn how to smile as you're killed. If you want to be like the folks on the hill, a working class hero is something to be. A working class hero is something to be. If you want to be a hero will, just follow me. If you want to be a hero, well, just follow me.
Speaker 1:I should probably say that, while I was born into a coordinator class family and while I have had coordinator class education and even as a full-time activist revolutionary media person, have inhabited the world of the coordinator class due to the movement roles I have had, that is, roles of what Roberts calls the PMC. I liked and am conveying Roberts' piece precisely because I have seen all over for my 76 years just what she has felt and is able to better convey. Roberts continues these examples aren't anecdotal. I'm not exaggerating when I say that I've never met another working class person, from both the global north and south, who doesn't have handfuls of personal experiences such as these. The PMC have self-internalized and reproduced the apprush of nature of successive states, alienating us for the conditions of our existence that we never chose but were born into. It's irrefutable that they played a monumental part in the ruthless decimation of working class consciousness and power, pulling it right down to the ground where it continues to lay in tatters to this day. I interject Again Roberts is conveying felt reality, not trying to explain why it exists, but let me give a stab at some brief explanation To the Aaron, rex, hanell and I, and earlier to Bakunin and many Marxists, but not Lenin and Trotsky, and later to many more people of diverse thinking.
Speaker 1:The PMC, or coordinator class, has as its defining underlying situation a position in the division of labor, below owners, who are above, and above workers, who are below. So why aren't coordinators and workers, who are all employees of owners all in one category, one class called workers. It is because I think among these employees, some of them monopolize empowering circumstances, that is, they have roles that convey to them information, connections, confidence, access, etc. While the rest of them, workers, are left with roles that disempower them, that is, they have roles that reduce their information, connections, confidence, access, etc. And both are prepared for these slots in society Unchallenged. This division of labor leads the empowered, who are above, to see themselves, and workers below, one way, and that leads workers below to see themselves and coordinators above another way. Roberts continues If the reader is dubious about what I'm saying here, instead of perpetually theorizing the nature of our existence from a physical and philosophical distance, go and find a working class person, ask if any of the aforementioned applies to them and how they have been personally affected by it. And I interject that Roberts is way beyond right that this is a very good way to become aware of the situation and its importance For myself.
Speaker 1:Way back in time I taught in a prison and had the scale and import of the situation revealed and impressed upon me by some inmates there. I was teaching a kind of new left, very militant, very radical and even revolutionary course on economics. I did a section talking about capitalists, their situation, motives, policies, thoughts, lifestyles, etc. The inmates fully understood, and this was nothing new for them, but they were not too agitated about it. There was no real passion behind their responses to questions about owners, to their criticisms of them. Then I did a section about what I called the coordinator class, what Roberts calls the PMC. To hear this out loud was new for the inmates. Indeed, they hadn't heard anything quite like it before, but they knew all about it in ways far more perceptive than what I relayed. From their own experiences and about this in the class, they got really agitated, really passionate, really outraged. These inmates had not been treated like dirt, face to face, by owners. Indeed, for the most part they had never met, talked with or directly experienced or even seen from a distance owners, that is, capitalists. But they all had tales of face to face integration by and subordination to, lawyers, doctors, engineers, accountants, managers, faculty and on and on. To talk openly about all that brought forth militant class consciousness from these inmates Roberts continued being cognizant of this side of our struggle is therefore vital, not just to understand our history and who we are as people, but also because this longstanding marginalization has impacted how many of the working class view and interact with the PMC, including those of the PMC who belong to environmental movements, and Roberts goes on.
Speaker 1:There are countless working class people with the means to mobilize who actively shy away from PMC-led spaces For many reasons, making their retreat a form of self-preservation against the very people who purport to be standing in alliance with them. For obvious reasons, this has ramifications when it comes to movement-building strategies in all their forms. Frustratingly, the movement remains largely reluctant to address these issues and more often than not, it's not mentioned at all. But rather than avoiding it entirely or downplaying the problem by stipulating that marks and angles were white middle class individuals from the global north and suggesting that perhaps all the degrowth movement needs is time to connect with others, we need to be confronting this head on. All of the empirical evidence, lived experiences and personal testimonies point to this being an issue in need of remediation to varying degrees across the global north and south, so we need to stop pretending like it isn't something worthy of critical conversation. I can assure the reader that this won't go away on its own, no matter how cataclysmic our conditions may become in the future. The left is losing the climate class war and sitting around waiting for time to heal all wounds or ignoring this issue entirely will only incur us further losses.
Speaker 1:Emphasizing the problems between the working class and PMC doesn't create an us and them mentality. So long as the reader is able to adopt a truly objective stance and be willing to engage in a continuous process of critical self-reflection, even if it may apply to them and even if it's an uncomfortable truth, we can't afford to be anything but bluntly pragmatic. But to quote Marx, quote everyone will have to admit to himself that he has no idea what the future ought to be. It is precisely the advantage of the new trend that we do not dogmatically anticipate the world, but only want to find the world through criticism of the old one. If constructing the future and settling everything for all times are not our affair, it is all the more clear that we have to accomplish at present.
Speaker 1:I am referring to ruthless criticism of all that exists. Ruthless both in the sense of not being afraid of the results it arrives at and in the sense of being just as little afraid of conflict with the powers that be. I interject here. I may have a quibble with what Roberts may mean, and I certainly have more than a quibble with what Marx meant. Yes, we have to extend our critique beyond ownership relations, not only to race, gender and power relations, but also to a broader view of class relations, accounting for the class between labor and capital. But we must also move from criticism to advocacy of a vision that replaces the institutional causes of oppression with institutions that advance liberation. The solution to not being sectarian about that, to not being regimented about that, to being open-minded about that, is well, to do those three things but simultaneously to at least develop the core of a vision.
Speaker 1:Roberts continues quite consistently with both the critical and visionary need, I think, by saying if people are truly serious about the emancipation of the working class, then they must take the time to learn about our sources of de-emancipation. We can't build the struggle unless we fully comprehend and acknowledge the multifarious forms that it takes in the lives of the working class. We can't expect to bring anyone on board otherwise. And it's vacuously naive to believe that a global struggle against the bourgeoisie is enough by itself to unite people across class factions. It isn't. If it was, it would have worked by now.
Speaker 1:If the reader still needs convincing, allow me to put this another way, it's taken half a century, says Roberts, to bring class politics to the top of de-gross agenda. After half a century, people are still grappling with the question of attracting working class people to the movement. Now, of course, it's grown in size and popularity since it started, exponentially so, but it remains predominantly composed of white PMC individuals from the global north. De-growth has effectively sat on the shelf for long enough that it's become the stale ham sandwich of movements, devoid of a demographic representation that reflects the heterogeneity of society, deprived of the voices and perspectives that a heterogeneous demographic brings with it, and subsequently incapable of becoming a serious contender for mass politics. Maybe, just maybe, it's time to start thinking about how the social dynamics of the movement have inadvertently contributed to this and how this can be addressed.
Speaker 1:These issues can be remediated, but only if the movement is willing to be pragmatic and open to critical self-reflection on their limitations. In this light, adopting ecosocialist principles and practices is a monumental step in the right direction. However, socialist theory isn't a panacea for the working class, and even with this shift in approach, this still doesn't alter a given individual's demographic. It doesn't matter what people's intentions are. It doesn't matter that some PMC activists would never dream to treat others in this way. What matters is how they are perceived by the very people that they are trying to reach.
Speaker 1:Pmc-dominated spaces movements are unattracted to much of the working class for many reasons, to the extent that they avoid them entirely. And she says I will unpack this further in part two I guess that's still to come including the challenges of PMC spaces movements that are inherently academic in nature. Most of these issues, roberts continues, have their roots in the historic, systematic and social marginalization abetted by the PMC. They are issues so entrenched that it has culminated in the working class struggle becoming a socially dyadic one. It exists as a struggle against the bourgeoisie and the PMC. Understanding this forms part of the crucial foundation knowledge that anyone must have in their repertoire if they are to successfully engage with the working class. So ended Roberts' essay. And I think this essay by Roberts ought to be the subject of a very serious, very heartfelt, very sincere, very in-depth evaluation and further elaboration throughout not only the degrowth movement but really all movements in our contemporary landscape of activism. It should not only lead to assessments of attitudes, beliefs and habits in all our movements but also assessments of ruthlessly criticism of, but also proposals for how to and what to replace current oppressive structural relations in society with in the economy, and also beyond the economy and indeed also in our own movements.
Speaker 1:And if you do want to react, to ask questions about or provide extensions to or criticize this episode which presented Roberts' essay, please visit znetworkorg and from there check the upper left little row of icons. The last one links to Z's discord system and has diverse channels for explorations, debates etc. Including one devoted to Revolution Z. If you have an incredible memory, the link to Z's discord is discordgg slash capital J K capital Z, ha capital FJ 4, hq. Once more, the link is discordgg. Slash capital J K capital Z, ha capital FJ 4, hq. Otherwise, again, you can address it from the parent Znet site at znetworkorg. And all that said, and with thanks to Emma Rivers Roberts, this is Michael Albert signing off. Until next time for Revolution Z.