Buying our way out

On the book Poverty by America

Hey all, sorry I haven’t been writing these as much. Life, in all its beautiful ways (and it some of it’s more demanding ways) has kept me from writing. But last night, I was reading a book called Poverty by America by Matthew Desmond and I have some thoughts.

First a disclaimer, I am only about halfway through the book, this isn’t intended to be a review of the book, so much as some thoughts that I have about specific aspects of it, mainly his claim that in many ways the entrenched nature of poverty is connected to the consumptions habits of what he terms the middle and upper classes.

Now on the hand, he makes what I think is a valid point, that people (even well-meaning) in the “middle class” (which I am putting in quotes because as a good Marxist I’m aware this term obfuscates the reality of class relations) often espouse values that seem based in equality, but exist mainly to rid them of their guilt about being entrenched in these systems.

There is absolutely truth to this, the way in which what is in reality the petite bourgeois (whom Matthew calls the middles class) align their political ideology around keeping their own status secure. They will often vote against things such as mixed use buildings (to mention one example in the book) as they see it as detrimental to their own capital, even if that exists only in their ownership of their own homes. It is also true that, the consumption habits often allow us to become fixated on wanting more, yet this is where I begin to have issues.

First, Matthew seems to allocate a large swath of people to what he calls the middle class, based on his idea of yearly income alone, it contains people who could have a decent job up to people earning significant amounts of money. Nevertheless, the issue here is one more of ownership, who has control over those options? He seems to equate consumption habits with controlling the means of production, and while buying things ethically can be a good route, I feel as if his suggestion is mimicking the very thing he decries, that of finding ways to rid oneself of the crippling guilt of participation in capitalism.

Now, to be clear, I do think incessantly buying things as a form of being is an issue, but this issue has more to do with how our desires are shaped by capitalism, rather than some kind of ethical dilemma. What often happens as a result of the idea of ethical consumption is someone attempts to do so, and uses it as an argument against any fundamental change. True, Matthew does talk about some structural issues, but his whole argument seems to be based on the idea that we need to rethink how we approach poverty, without calling out explicitly that this is by design, and furthermore, a design that is structured by Capitalism.

Still, he is absolutely right to call out a specific kind of bourgeois liberal ideology built around ignoring poverty. It is certainly true that the game of capitalism tries to do this, and does it effectively.

This is why I don’t like using the phrase “middle class”. This is a phrase which does that work for capitalists. By removing a large section of the population from the idea of being working class (which includes everyone from a union worker to a cashier) they create a division which serves their own purposes. If you call yourself “middle class” what are doing in some sense is ceading ground to their ideology. You are pushing away the “other” (in the form of working class or working poor) so that you can feel as if you are participating in the same game that the capitalists are.

Imagining a world in which we realize our connections as those of us working for liberation is the one thing that scares them. Recognize this, if you really want to be aligned towards helping others, and you’ll move yourself away from having desires that are shaped by the very people keeping you from

everything.