Peasants with pitchforks
… might be a sign of progress or bloody reaction. It’s a nodal point, where history’s pivot presents a very real bifircation.
Mark Jones eight years ago described the post-Cold War booms as the capitalist metropoles digesting the fallen Eastern Bloc, somewhat slowly, “like a snake who’s swallowed a goat.” The snake is shitting now… and starving.
The unfolding economic crisis — which surprised the mainstream commentators and analysts, but about which those crazy leftists have been Playing Cassandra for a decade — is now firmly off the tracks and roaring toward some abyss.
When these things hit, the peasants have a tendency to seize pitchforks from the barns and form scary mobs at the city’s edge. Only in this case, the peasants have been barracked in the low-density exurbs, cleaned up and provided with technocratic educations, provisioned with thousand-mile food and entropic toys, called middle-class (whatever the hell that ever meant… but they believed it), then saddled with the debt that fueled their colossus-cars and, likewise, the runaway train.
The somnambulence of this sector is about to end.
Poor people alrady know the crisis; but the most dangerous potential resides within Suburbia, the political center of gravity in the US.
From yonder financial ridge, where the gran manje had thusfar shushed one another’s feverish conversations, the cries of anguish are being heard in the ‘burbs. The hot-shots are being eaten by bears. We may all be eaten by bears. The ruckus is rousing Levittown.
“The shit,” as we say in Academia, “is on.”
The question, one of the big questions, is what will the peasants do?
That depends, really. If they hear only from demagogues, then they will behave like demagogic mobs. When populism took hold in the US at the turn of the last century, “Pitchfork” Ben Tillman led the mobs who beseiged their creditors (rightly so) away from the banks and out to lynch Black people. Hitler led his peasants into the industrialized slaughter of Jews and Slavs… one might call it Genocidal Keynesianism.
Not having an answer to these questions, my two-cents is this. Start right now explaining that this crisis has a home address: Wall Street.
It also has a religion: property. I don’t mean property like your house (though they probably own that) or your clothes or your grandma’s china. I mean forests and prairies and development properties and strip malls and factories.
I bring this up from my memory of strip mall and box store parking lots when I was in the Gulf Coast two years ago. Hurricane Katrina gave us a snapshot of generalized disaster.
The massive parking lots had been taken over by relief-squatters. Thousands of (mostly young) people who wanted to help had converged from around the country and set up food-and-clothing distribution points, soup kitchens, day-care, and ad hoc flea markets. The need was so great, and the relief provided by the government so non-existent, that no one, not even the cops (many of them devastated by the strorm themselves), gave any of them the lecture about, “This is private property.”
The people needed it. The people wanted it. And that, for the time, settled it.
No one knows where this will end up. But let’s don’t be led away from the bank to hang the innocent. And let’s don’t dismiss the value of squatting. We may have to re-write some rules.
Bruce F:
Richard Seymour has an interesting analysis of the situation on his site Lenin’s Tomb.
19 March 2008, 2:18 pmm.c.:
RE: Bonus Army Topicality
A little epistemological evidence. The `1931 2-day Invergordon mutiny caused the RN to change the name of the Atlantic Fleet to ‘HOME Fleet’(this rings familiar, MI5 & Special Branch report to the HOME Secretary’s Office. It gives Hillary Clinton’s 3AM TV ad added meaning) and helped contribute to the govt. & the Bank of England to abandon the Gold Standard 4 days later(Sept. 20, 1931).[wikipedia]
The amateur social historian in me says that steps like this lead to tangible results like the Beveridge Report and eventually the creation of the NHS & Welfare State.
19 March 2008, 2:36 pmCliss:
Re: Mob Ascending.
19 March 2008, 6:39 pmThe question was, are there any indications the general public has had enough? (i.e. ready to grab the pitch forks?)
And if that moment has arrived, then what can we expect?
I would say in terms of mobs, the U.S. population is placid, timid. They’ve endured massive losses these past few years. They are an anesthetized shadow of their former selves, from back to the 60’s going all the way back to the revolutionary days.
What happened?
I think that decades of home ownership and decorating themes have taken their toll. Also the distraction of living inside a gigantic home bubble, which is just now bursting is a big drain. It’s only just recently been revealed as a “hoax” as Stan wrote recently.
That’s why the young have always been seen as the biggest threat to the power elite: they are the least burdened by material possessions hence they are the most likely to revolt.
Every revolt has its price.
As things get more dire, I suspect that people will become more and more willing to revolt. Take away peoples’ homes, and you’ve got a problem.
Add to that hyperinflation which is coming, and you’ve taken away the last vestiges of support for the current economic Alice in Wonderland Ride.
I’ve read some alarming comments about banks now limiting the amount of money people can withdraw from their checking accounts.
Also, Kunstler is warning that we should expect “gas shortages” in the near future because the U.S. is having trouble paying its bills.
When that day arrives, it’s time to sharpen the pitch fork.
I believe this is more serious than losing their homes, or even having food on the table.
Loss of gas: the ultimate loss.
The U.S. is heavily armed, and they will not take kindly to having their driving priveleges curtailed. I would suggest that Feral Scholar readers keep their gas tanks full, and stay away from gas stations if we have shortages. Or go at odd hours.
Charles:
That depends, really. If they hear only from demagogues, then they will behave like demagogic mobs. When populism took hold in the US at the turn of the last century, “Pitchfork” Ben Tillman led the mobs who beseiged their creditors (rightly so) away from the banks and out to lynch Black people. Hitler led his peasants into the industrialized slaughter of Jews and Slavs… one might call it Genocidal Keynesianism.
^^^^^^
Not to be pollyannaish or anything, but sometimes in crises of war and economic depression, like 1917 Russia, the peasants with sickles ( and the workers with hammers, and soldiers and sailors with guns and ships)form soviets and take state power. But you need Bolshevik propaganda for that.
20 March 2008, 4:28 pmm.c.:
who said anything about mob, anarchy, & chaos?…. populism can be progressive & working class
21 March 2008, 12:24 pmStan:
In the absence of explanation, explanation is provided… like filling a vacuum. I have images of the first storm troopers.
21 March 2008, 1:10 pmDeAnander:
I’ve read some alarming comments about banks now limiting the amount of money people can withdraw from their checking accounts.
I heard a truly odd rumour — may be urban legend — that CostCo on the East Coast was limiting individual buyers to 1 50 lb bag of wheat flour. Can anyone confirm or deny, as this was third hand word-of-email and might well be a fast-moving legend…
21 March 2008, 4:30 pmDa' Buffalo:
I know that the producer price of ALL grains have increased dramatically over the last few months… It may be an attempt to prevent hoarding.
22 March 2008, 10:16 amld:
No doubt rising basic grain prices are in part attributable to demand-and-supply dynamics (conversion of cropland to biofuel production, exploitation of less productive marginal lands for foodstuff production,
23 March 2008, 7:29 ammore people eating higher on the food chain in the emerging market countries, etc) as well as the rising cost of hydrocarbon inputs to industrial agriculture (itself an artifact of peak oil tendencies), but we would be remiss not to notice that a big portion of the run-up in primary commodity prices is straightforward futures market speculation, as the M-M’ circuit evacuates the housing mortgage and securitized debt markets and finds another outlet. Not factoring this in to the picture will not do, as a possible coming slump in primary commodity prices might potentially prove. We will see…
UUU:
@ Id
30 March 2008, 6:11 amYours is a wise warning regarding the visitudes of investing but something is missing in your analysis of the commodity/pm price rise and that is the devaluation of the Federal Reserve Note. Presently investors, flush with FRN’s after a long economic boom, are looking for tangible, secure, debt-unencumbered assets . Add the political factor and what’s investing and what’s speculating can be somewhat subjective.