The genius of late post-industrial capitalism can be seen in the appearance of the expansion of wealth through the development of “credit markets” (or more accurately debt markets). At the end of WWII the United States had the highest national debt (adjusted for inflation) in its history, before or since. While that debt serviced the economy in terms of creating industries focused on mobilizing against the threat of militaristic expansion from Germany, Italy, and Japan, when the dust settled the debt still remained. Something had to be done. In the intervening years that debt was shifted from the government to the working class through the expansion of debt markets in a similar way that the “threat” of the Axis powers was shifted to the Communist bloc to maintain and expand those military industries we had just created.
For the citizen turned consumer things like education, large quantities of consumer goods, and home “ownership” were no longer available only to the bourgeoisie (the owners of the means of production or the proverbial millionaire next door). Through the use of consumer debt, capital was given the appearance of shifting from the owners of the means of production to the workers (while some form of this has always existed the quantitative expansion caused a qualitative shift by making debt not only all pervasive, but the default assumption behind market actions). What happened was a decentralization of the “company store” allowing the working class to purchase goods beyond their means and, as a result, bind themselves inextricably to the lender. Buying in installments became increasingly commonplace, as did taking out loans in excess of one’s entire net worth for the privilege of having to do all the maintenance on one’s residence, and eventually owning a property that, when accounting for inflation, was worth what was paid for it. In short what was opened up with the expansion of debt markets was indentured servitude for the 20th century.
Once debts and assets are accounted for these workers lived with the outward appearance of the bourgeoisie and yet their personal net worth was near zero to negative. Traditionally we would call a person with a negative net worth poor. Now however we offered them the opportunity of working for the system rather than sending them to a debtor’s prison. This expansion of debt markets put much of the working class under house arrest, able to move more or less freely but suffering under the yoke of consumer debt. Because of the debt (and its commensurate lifestyle), these people now had “more to lose,” they become even more invested in maintaining the status quo, and any revolutionary potential is wiped out by the hope of owning this year’s newest gadget. At a surface level things had improved. More people had more stuff. This “expansion of the middle class” seemingly gave opportunity to millions. Yet a quick look under the hood shows a radically different picture.
The working class was now divided between those engaging with the debt markets and those living within their means. The proletariat became alienated from itself. This alienation made it unable to recognize itself due to the difference in lifestyle. Those whose lives had taken on the appearance of the bourgeoisie began to don the class actions and assumptions of bourgeois values. “Free Markets,” rugged individualism, profit as the ultimate good, and other class values of those who own the means of production got infused with the thinking of the self-alienated working class. Markets became freer, consumer debt expanded, the rights of corporations (huge pockets of wealth) began to take on a status equal to, if not greater than, that of the individual human subject.
The working class became reduced to the status of a consumer with a bank card. In short, Trotsky’s goal of reducing the human subject to a working number came to fruition through our credit cards. After September 11, 2001 we were told that our duty as citizens of the United States was to shop. Our rightful place in the order of things was nothing more than that of a consumer of goods and debt. Perhaps George W. Bush was a communist sleeper agent a la Phillip K. Dick’s Radio Free Albemuth, for he did more than most to trun Trotsky’s vision into a reality. And all the while, the rich became richer.
The profit motive was the motive. In that rhetorical action of this nation’s former President the ethical basis of this country was shifted to place profit and wealth as the pinnacle of human achievement. To quote Eric B. and Rakim, “Stop smiling. Still don’t nothing move but the money.” And money did move, as well as the labor power of the, now masked, working class, directly into the accounts of the bourgeois money lenders. Credit, of the scale and sophistication we have today, is a fairly new development. Even as late as 1948 the capitalist system was based around actual ownership.
The opening of new commons is in large part a reaction to this tendency of debt (and the illusionistic possibility it offers) to lay its noose around the neck of the worker. A simple rejection of debt markets is not enough to overcome its totalizing effect. Rather an alternate system which operates from an entirely different ethical foundation is needed. A system which recognizes the primacy of the human subject as subject provides the possibility of resisting the dehumanizing tendency of contemporary capitalism. But nothing will be possible so long as the self-alienation of the proletariat is maintained by the powers that be.
