New Commune-ist Manifesto

For 21st century capitalism the more disposable the better. Ocean life and human health be damned.

According to a recent Ellen MacArthur Foundation study, the world’s oceans are set to have more plastic than fish by 2050. At the current rate of production and disposal the net weight of plastic in the oceans will be greater than that of fish in a little over three decades.

There are currently 150 million tonnes of plastic debris floating in the world’s oceans. Most of it takes centuries to break down. Thousands of large animals – such as turtles and birds – die every year from indigestible plastic debris in the ocean. Millions of other sea creatures suffer when they consume plastic.

The Canada-US Great Lakes – the largest freshwater ecosystem in the world – have also accumulated large amounts of plastic. A study released in December concluded that almost 22 million pounds of plastic debris are dumped into the Great Lakes annually. Microplastics in the lakes “act like sponges for certain pollutants and are easily ingested by aquatic organisms, including fish and shellfish, which may ultimately end up on our plates.”

During the second half of the 20th century plastic production rose 20 fold and it’s on pace to double over the next two decades. More plastic was produced during the first decade of the 21st century than in all of the 20th.

Approximately half of plastic is for single use. Some 70 billion plastic bottlesand 1 trillion plastic bags are produced every year globally. The first disposable plastic pop bottle was produced in 1975 and the first plastic grocery bag was introduced a few years earlier.

Before wreaking havoc on ocean fauna, plastics also harm human health. In 2014 Mother Jones published an expose titled “Are any plastics safe?” It noted, “almost all commercially available plastics that were tested leached synthetic estrogens—even when they weren’t exposed to conditions known to unlock potentially harmful chemicals, such as the heat of a microwave, the steam of a dishwasher, or the sun’s ultraviolet rays.” The Mother Jones story draws a parallel between the plastic and tobacco industries.

The Canadian Environmental Protection Act provides the federal government with a tool to restrict toxic substances while Environment Canada operates a scientific review to test for possible harm. Yet few plastic products have been outlawed.

Controversy over the use of BPA (bisphenol A) in baby bottles and some toys prompted the federal government to ban use of this chemical in baby bottles but BPA is still used in other plastics. Similarly, in 2010 the government announced it was banning Polybrominated diphenyl ethers (PBDEs) flame retardants, which have been linked to cancer and other health ailments, but it didn’t outlaw the toxins from new plastic consumer items such as TVs until December and continues to allow PBDEs to be used in manufacturing items.

The toxins in plastics should be better regulated. Plastics can also be made less damaging by producing them from waste products and improving their decomposition. Additionally, measures to promote recycling are necessary. But, as Ian Angus points out, recycling is often a way for the industry to divert “attention away from the production of throwaway plastics to individual consumer behavior—the ‘solutions’ they promote involve cleaning up or recycling products that never should have been made in the first place.”

To that end activists have pressed universities to stop selling plastic bottles and for cities to restrict free plastic bags. While helpful, these efforts are overwhelmed by an economic system enthralled to wasteful consumption.

Based on externalizing costs and privatizing profits, 21st-century capitalism is turning our seas into a plastic blob.

Yves Engler

Which comes first, racism or the systemic need for racism?

In all the reams of printed and digital discussion about Donald Trump’s (attempted) ban on Muslims from seven countries, the murder of six worshippers at a Quebec City mosque and Islamophobia in general, few commentators have mentioned the economic roots of racism.

But the truth is ideas have always been needed to justify treating other people badly in the competition for wealth and power. As long as there have been battles over resources people have objectified and demeaned the “other” to provide ideological cover and to motivate their side to victory.

This has likely gone on for a very, very long time, but it was not until the modern, capitalist era that the notion of “race” was invented. Capitalism was taking over the world and needed an ideology to explain and justify the enslavement of Africans, the pillage of Asia and the stealing of indigenous people’s lands across the globe, amongst other crimes against humanity. The absurd idea of “race” and the ideology of racism were invented to serve the economic interests of European capitalists.

Like religion, which often served to justify various forms of minority rule and imposed a common understanding of “the way things are” to enable a few to rule over ever larger numbers of people, the ideology of racism took on various cultural and institutional forms.

So, for example, in the land that is now called Canada, where there was little economic need for slavery the institutions and culture of racism were much different than in the parts of the Americas where plantation economies were dominant. Anti-aboriginal racism, needed to justify stealing First Nations’ land and control over resources, was, and is, most common.

Even within the various slave societies the culture and institutions of racism could vary widely depending on the exact economic and social situation. This can be illustrated by contrasting racism in the United States, with its large poor white European population and the Caribbean islands with their overwhelmingly African slave majorities. In the latter societies the legal system and cultural practices gave higher status to “part white” people while in the former, one’s legal and social status was black unless you could “pass” as completely white. The economy in the United States didn’t need “whiter” people to function as foremen or various other higher status positions — it had enough Europeans to perform those roles.

If racism and the forms it took were shaped by economic interests, what can we learn from this history that is relevant to current Islamophobia and even the rise of Donald Trump?

First, that there is a fundamental connection between western capitalists’ desire/need to profit from Middle Eastern resources and Islamophobia (and other forms of anti-Arab racism). The ongoing war over control of the land of Palestine is obviously a key source of this racism, as is evidenced by Jewish/Christian Zionists’ (a critical Trump electoral base) fanatical support for both growing Israel settlements and anti-Muslim ideology.

Second, that to be an effective anti-racist one must also be prepared to change our economy, and especially its addiction to war, so that it no longer requires the sort of “us and them” fight over resources that produces racism.

Third, one must understand that many supporters of the current economic system believe that to be anti-racist is also to be anti-capitalist. Nationalists such as Trump, Le Pen, Farage etc., are consciously racist precisely because they believe the us/them way of looking at the world must be encouraged to keep their national capitalism strong. And, one needs to add, to keep working class opposition at a minimum through dividing and conquering.

People who desire a better, inclusive, democratic, racism-free world can achieve their goals, but only if they understand the forces that are working against them.

Gary Engler

Okay, here’s the proposition — you can have a good job, decent pay, lots of overtime, but only if you give me your grandchildren or maybe your great-grandchildren.

Would you make this deal with the devil?

This is pretty much the choice currently offered workers by the captains of the carbon extraction, transportation and burning industries.

In fact, in a more general sense, it seems to be the choice being forced upon many governments around the world by the devil, which has taken the form of our current economic system.

Capitalism is asking us to choose between jobs and the future livability of our planet. Capitalism tells us it makes sense to flood some of the best food growing land in B.C. and build a dam to provide electricity for Alberta’s tar sands; capitalism says build more pipelines across B.C. and allow hundreds more oil tankers every year to sail through pristine waters; capitalism doesn’t care that more carbon extraction will guarantee our planet is cooked.

Capitalism, especially the current neoliberal version, says profitability should be the sole criteria by which we decide what gets built, what services are provided and who works. If there’s a profit to be made, let’s invest in it. Don’t do it if there’s no profit to be made. The ‘invisible hand’ of the market will solve all our problems.

Profits bring jobs, the capitalist devil whispers in our ears. Jobs! So you can overcome or avoid the misery of unemployment. Jobs! So you won’t fall behind on your mortgage, your credit card payments or your student loan. Jobs! So you will be able to buy ever more stuff that you don’t really need but somehow those great commercials convince you otherwise.

“Think about the jobs!” the devil/capitalism repeats over and over again. When brave critics ask: “What about the consequences to our environment?” the devil/capitalism answers: “Don’t listen to those Leap-ing people. They’re radicals. They’re tree-hugging, moonbeam-chasing hippies. They’re Indians. They’re anti-development. They’re socialists. They’re from downtown Toronto. Think about the jobs!”

So what do we do? Listen to the devil and build more pipelines, tar sands plants, fracked oil wells, housing that requires ever more carbon-spewing automobiles and tell ourselves that we are not responsible for what happens to our grandchildren?

Or do we cast out the devil? Tell the beast we do not have to choose between jobs and the environment, that in fact there will be more jobs in a sustainable energy-based economy. Proclaim loudly that, if forced to choose between capitalism and the environment, we will choose the environment every glorious day on this wondrous planet.

The truth is the devil’s way leads to hell on earth. Building our economy solely on capitalist greed for profit has placed us all, lobster-like, into a pot of hot water that is only a few degrees away from cooking our great-grandchildren. Our most critical task right now is figuring out a way of getting out of the pot and turning down the heat.

The good news is the devil’s way is not the only way, despite the constant media bombardment proclaiming that to be so. Humankind has followed the devil/capitalism path for only a relatively short time. We have tens of thousands of years of history proving that we can organize our lives around values other than greed for profit. Even today, in the midst of the most capitalist-dominated period ever, most of our lives, outside of paid work, is based on love, caring, sharing, solidarity, respect and doing what’s best for our collective future. This is called family and community.

If we can just come to the understanding that an economic and political system can also be based on these ‘community values’ we would have a path to building a viable alternative to the mess we are in.

The devil promotes the idea that we have no alternative to the way things are, but if all the people who care about their grandchildren come together to talk about a better way we can have jobs, lower the temperature and save our planet for future generations.

For capital in Canada and the U.S. the sudden drop in oil prices is a disaster. For humankind it is a signal that fossil fuel use must decline.

Thirty years ago scientists pointed out that the burning of fossil fuels was causing global warming. To prevent catastrophic climate change, carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere would have to be kept below 350 parts per million, a level that could be maintained only if three quarters of known reserves of conventional fossil fuels were left in the ground.

Corporate capitalism in Canada responded by investing tens of billions in tar sands, fracking, and oil pipelines. U.S. capital invested even more in off-shore drilling and fracking. Governments provided fossil fuel corporations with tax breaks and subsidies. By 2014 atmospheric carbon dioxide levels over North America on some days exceeded 400 parts per million.

In the 1980s when science first drew attention to global warming, it was to be expected that some would claim this was merely a theory. Now, the hypothesis of human-caused climate change has been tested and measured. Increases in global temperature continue to be historically unprecedented. As predicted, glaciers and polar ice caps are shrinking. Sea levels are rising. Droughts and floods have become more frequent. Storms, rainfall, hurricanes have become more severe. Carbon dioxide raining down from the atmosphere increase ocean acidity; crustaceans from coral reefs to micro organisms are losing the capacity to reproduce, undermining the ocean ecosystems on which all sea life depend.

Climate change skeptics may have been eased to the fringes, but corporate capitalism continues to ignore the impact of carbon emissions. For capital, profits from the exploration, development and transportation of coal, oil and natural gas are just too important. Profits in the automobile industry, air travel, agribusiness, and global trade depend on plentiful fossil fuels. Major financial institutions are heavily invested, directly and indirectly, in fossil fuels. In a time when most global markets for consumer and producer goods are stagnant and low interest rates have reduced the base return on capital, capital generally is dependent on profits from fossil fuels.

Unwilling to reduce dependence on fossil fuels, corporate interests in the U.S. and Canada insist that green energy is not a realistic alternative. To undermine expansion of green energy, they have persuaded federal governments to impose punitive tariffs on solar panels made abroad. They have persuaded states, counties, and utilities to deny local solar producers access to grids. Meanwhile, in China, India, Africa, Brazil, and even in some U.S. states wind and solar power is a growing source of electricity. Electricity from wind power will double by the end of this decade. With present technology solar power alone could replace all the electricity now provided by fossil fuels at no additional cost. As investments on wind and solar increase, the technology will advance, further reducing the cost and efficiency of green power.

To drive a wedge between industrial workers and environmentalists, corporate shills present green power as touchy feely, less industrial, less masculine than energy from fossil fuels. Yes, solar and wind are cutting-edge technologies. Many highly educated professional and technical specialists will be required in basic research, development and administration. Still, most employees will be engaged in manufacturing, transportation, installation and maintenance–traditional blue collar occupations that can be equally done by men and women. Work will be widely dispersed in all regions. By boosting employment, income, and markets, the massive expenditures required to convert to green energy would end the austerity promoted by capitalist interests. Employment and income will rise. Markets will revive.

The shift to green energy, motivated by human well-being, will have to be pushed from below. Although capitalist interests now have a death grip on political agendas, people acting together for the common good can counter capitalist influence. We are the vast majority. Industrial and service workers, professionals and technical specialists, students, the unemployed, pensioners all share a common interest in the continuation of the environments on which humankind depends. No more than five percent depend on marginal increases in profits.

Strikes, protests, boycotts, and civil disobedience can help speed up the shift away from fossil fuels. Community-owned utilities, cooperatives, and local capital can take initiatives. Electoral mobilizations can push federal, provincial, and state governments to shift to green energy and to provide funding for public transportation. Cities could be reconfigured to make it practical for people to walk and cycle to employment, services, entertainment and commerce. Publicly supported local food production could replace dependence on transnational corporate imports.

The funding required could in part come from excise taxes on fossil fuels, perhaps $50 a barrel, equivalent to the recent drop in the price of oil. Since capitalist profit is at the root of the problem, most of the revenues should come out of additional taxes on corporate income and private capital.

Al Engler

Is imagining a better economic/political system a necessary step in making it happen?

To answer this important question it is helpful to consider its antithesis: Is it possible that a different system could be built without people first imagining it?

Seems far-fetched, given that most everything humans build is first envisaged and then planned.

Unless, of course, one believes that “building” an economic system is beyond our capability because the economy is ordained by a supreme being or is simply part of nature, like life itself.

Given how our current crony capitalism is leading a warming, war-weary world to more income inequality and environmental devastation, our very survival depends on neither of these propositions being true. We’re cooked, literally, if the way things are is the way things will continue to be.

So, for those of us who believe human beings are in control of our own destiny, or at least the rules that govern our economy and politics, it is time to come together and imagine a better system, one that promotes environmental sustainability, equality and international cooperation.

The way to begin is by identifying the most critical issues we face then think about how our current system makes those problems worse or prevents us from dealing with them.

Environmental degradation (including global warming), war, inequality and the lack of sustainable development are four key problems the global community currently faces. What is the relationship between our current economic/political system and these critical issues?

It seems impossible to deny, at least for any reality-based thinker, that our current global capitalist economic/political system has created, and prevents us from fixing, the mess we are in.

Primarily this is due to the powerful private profit engine of capitalism, which in turn incentivizes the externalization/socialization of as many costs as possible. The owners of capital are driven to make ever greater profits — the system rewards those who do and punishes those who don’t — which of course leads the profit seeker to reduce costs in any way possible. To survive, capitalists must try to avoid paying for the negative consequences of whatever is the source of their profits, be it the instruments of war, environmental destruction, global warming, over-consumption or an unhealthy food system.

Protecting and maximizing profit gives capitalists an incentive to deny the ill effects of their products, to fund global warming deniers and to promote war. The potential for governments to pass laws that may negatively affect profits is an incentive for capitalists to do whatever it takes to make sure the political system works in their narrow, immediate interests. This is the source of what some defenders of an abstract, idealized capitalism call cronyism, but which is, in fact, a logical outcome of a system that promotes greed and private profit.

Our current reality is an economic/political arrangement that is run by and for the richest people in the world. Effectively it is an oligarchical system of one dollar, one vote; certainly not a democracy based on one person, one vote.

Given where the status quo is leading us and the best estimates of scientists about how quickly we will get there, we need to change and fast.

But what sort of economic/political system can be imagined and then built that will save us from global warming, other forms of environmental disaster and growing inequality; one that can come about relatively peacefully so that weapons of mass destruction are turned into ploughshares rather than destroy the planet?

For change to happen peacefully it must be popular, supported by most people around the world. That, in turn, means the new system must ultimately be more democratic, because the most popular system is one in which most people feel they have a stake.

Certainly the new system we imagine must get rid of the perverse incentives that result in war, the devastation of our environment and inequality. Instead it must encourage environmental stewardship, cooperation and equality, both of responsibility and power. These must become foundational principles of our economy as well as our political system on the local, national, international and personal level.

But this imagined system must be achievable, because it is worse than pointless to dream about something that cannot happen, it is a waste of time we do not have. And to be achievable this new system must be something that can be built by the people who are currently, or soon to be, alive.

A very tall order, indeed, but whatever the details of this new system of economic and political democracy, millions of us need to soon begin imagining it.

Gary Engler

If the Harper government were honest about its policies, it would proclaim for all to hear: “Our goal is to make the rich richer.”

Many Canadians would agree that has been the effect of Conservative domestic policies, but may be surprised to learn it is also true in international affairs.

“Austerity should not be abandoned, says Canada’s finance minister,” blared a headline in London’s Financial Times earlier this month. Before recent G7 meetings Jim Flaherty told the international business paper he was worried that some officials were “pulling back” from slashing public spending and pursuing deficit targets.

“What I worry about is those that suggest that austerity should be abandoned,” noted Canada’s long-serving finance minister. “I think that’s the road to ruin quite frankly.”

Flaherty’s comment was a response to growing challenges to austerity, notably the European Commission’s move to give France and Spain more time to meet EU-mandated deficit targets. It was also a reminder of the Conservatives’ banker-friendly response to the worst economic crisis in Europe since the Second World War.

Even with youth unemployment rates in a number of countries at 25 to 50 per cent or higher, Ottawa has repeatedly supported the German-led push for European governments to cut social spending.

The Conservatives have backed this thinly veiled ruling-class effort to weaken labour’s bargaining position and roll back the European welfare state.

During a June 2011 visit to Athens Harper forcefully backed austerity measures bitterly resisted by much of the Greek population.

“I certainly admire the determination of Prime Minister Papandreou, and the very difficult actions he’s had to undertake in response to problems his government did not create. So we are very much all on his side.”

When German Chancellor Angela Merkel visited Ottawa in August of last year Harper reiterated his support for austerity measures. “There are additional things that have to be done” by European governments to end the continent’s economic troubles, he said.

“One of the things I appreciate about Chancellor Merkel’s leadership is the willingness, including at times of urgency and stress, to not just find any solution but to find correct and good solutions,” Harper added.

While supporting austerity measures, the Conservatives have publicly opposed efforts to tax and regulate the banks largely responsible for the economic collapse.

The Conservatives denounced efforts to better regulate speculation in international financial markets. In November 2009 British Prime Minister Gordon Brown proposed a tiny (ranging from .005 per cent to one per cent) tax on international financial transactions. Worried about the plight of investment bankers, Flaherty immediately dismissed the idea of a global ‘Tobin Tax’.

“That’s not something that we would want to do. We’re not in the business of raising taxes,” said Flaherty.

For his part, Harper admitted to blocking the G20’s bid for an international banking tax.

“Whether it’s taking strong and clear positions, for instance, at the G20 on something like a global financial regulation and a banking tax, we don’t just say, ‘Well, a consensus is developing for that. We’ll go along with it.’ It was not in our interest. It actually happens to be bad policy as well,” the prime minister was quoted as saying in the July 2011 issue of Maclean’s.

The Conservatives also spoke out against Washington’s late 2011 move to restrict some of the high-risk/high-return banking activities that led to the 2008 economic collapse (the so-called “Volcker rule”). Flaherty and Bank of Canada governor Mark Carney both sent letters to U.S. decision-makers criticizing the reforms.

“I am writing to express my concerns regarding the proposed Volcker rule, which could have material adverse effects on Canadian financial institutions and markets,” wrote Flaherty in February 2012.

Flaherty and Carney intervened following a bid by U.S. bankers to spark international opposition to the reforms. That combined with Canadian banks owning major assets in the United States helps explain the Conservatives’ position.

The Harper government has consistently supported Canada’s banks and the global-investor class. In fact, their entire foreign policy is largely designed around the question: How can we make the world’s richest 0.1 per cent even richer?

 Yves Engler

Foreign Affairs Minister John Baird’s recent mission to Latin America cannot mask Canada’s unprecedented diplomatic isolation in the hemisphere. Despite shifting ‘aid’ to the region and claiming to have made Latin America a priority, Ottawa is increasingly offside with a region breaking free from centuries of Western imperialism.

On July 9 the Organization of American States (OAS) held a meeting to discuss four European countries’ refusal to let Bolivia’s presidential plane enter their airspace. Six days earlier Evo Morales was returning from a meeting in Moscow where he said Bolivia could be open to giving political asylum to former CIA contractor Edward J. Snowden, who is wanted by Washington on espionage charges.

The US apparently suspected that Snowden, who was then stuck in the Moscow Airport, was on Morales’ plane. As such, the Obama administration pressed France, Portugal, Spain and Italy to block Morales’ plane in a bid to capture the whistleblower or to deliver a warning to other governments thinking about granting Snowden asylum.

Dubbed a “hostile act” by Bolivia, the OAS condemned the European countries’ “actions that violate the basic rules and principles of international law such as the inviolability of Heads of State.” All 34 OAS members backed the resolution except the US and Canada, which both added an appendix to the resolution saying they didn’t support it.

Harper’s Conservatives have repeatedly sided with Washington’s unpopular policies in the region. They’ve ramped up Canada’s contribution to fighting the ‘war on drugs’ at the same time as Latin America has backed away from this repressive model. Recently, Uruguay legalized marijuana and more and more officials in the region are publicly questioning a policy framework that has left tens of thousands dead and done little to stop the flow of illicit product. In May the OAS released a study advocating a re-think of the war on drugs, including a proposal to abandon the fight entirely.

A briefing note prepared for Diane Ablonczy, then-minister of state for the Americas, outlines Ottawa’s response to these shifting attitudes. “One of the objectives in our engagement in the Americas is to combat transnational crime and our programming investments demonstrate our commitment to this issue,” read the note obtained by Postmedia for a meeting Ablonczy had with Latin American ambassadors in November. “Canada looks forward to robust engagement in this process and sharing our domestic experience in addressing illicit drugs.”

Interestingly, the note was prepared by the Defence Department, which reflects the Canadian military’s growing role in the ‘war on drugs’. In recent months the military has deployed surveillance aircraft, naval vessels and submarines to the Caribbean and East Pacific as part of US drug interdiction missions. According to National Defence, the total cost of operations in the region has increased from $25.3 million in 2008-09 to $282.2 million this year.

Additionally, the Department of Foreign Affairs, Trade and Development has contributed millions of dollars to train police and promote other anti-drug initiatives.

Over the past quarter-century Washington has used the ‘war on drugs’ as a pretext to intervene in the region. For their part Latin America’s traditional elite have generally supported the militarization of society that accompanies the ‘war on drugs’ in order to undercut progressive social change.

Another means by which Washington and the elite have blocked reform efforts in the region is by removing governments that challenge their interests.

On June 22 of last year the left-leaning president of Paraguay, Fernando Lugo, was ousted in what some called an “institutional coup”. Upset with Lugo for disrupting 61-years of one party rule, Paraguay’s traditional ruling elite claimed he was responsible for a murky incident that left 17 peasants and police dead and the senate voted to impeach the president. The vast majority of countries in the hemisphere refused to recognize the new government. The Union of South American Nations (UNASUR) suspended Paraguay’s membership after Lugo’s ouster, as did the MERCOSUR trading bloc. But Canada was one of only a handful of countries in the world that immediately recognized the new government.

A week after the coup Harper’s Conservatives participated in an OAS mission that many member countries opposed. Largely designed to undermine those countries calling for Paraguay’s suspension from the OAS, delegates from the US, Canada, Haiti, Honduras and Mexico traveled to Paraguay to investigate Lugo’s removal from office. The delegation concluded that the OAS should not suspend Paraguay, which displeased many South American countries.

In 2009 the Harper government tacitly supported an even more controversial coup when the Honduran military removed elected president Manuel Zelaya. In response, the OAS expelled Honduras and many countries broke off diplomatic ties. But Ottawa refused to even suspend its training program with the Honduran military and Canada was the only major donor to Honduras — the largest recipient of Canadian assistance in Central America — that failed to sever any aid to the military government. The World Bank, European Union and even the US suspended some of their planned assistance to Honduras after the coup.

Two years ago Canada’s diplomatic isolation was formalized. Founded in December 2011, the 33-member Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (CELAC) includes every country in the hemisphere except Canada and the US. Some hope this new body will eventually replace the Washington-based OAS and unlike that body Cuba is a member of CELAC. In explaining the need for CELAC Evo Morales said, “A union of Latin American countries is the weapon against imperialism. It is necessary to create a regional body that excludes the United States and Canada.”

By tying itself to Washington’s unpopular policies, Ottawa has found itself more isolated than ever in the region.

Yves Engler

A recent study looking at how social mobility varies across US cities found that the poor are less likely to rise the socioeconomic ladder the more residents are geographically segregated. In other words, the further apart different social classes live the more entrenched inequality becomes.

The Equality of Opportunity Project study shows that relatively compact cities such as San Francisco, New York and Boston have greater social mobility than their more sprawling counterparts Memphis, Detroit and Atlanta. In relatively transit and pedestrian oriented San Francisco, for instance, someone born into the poorest fifth of income distribution has an 11 per cent chance of reaching the top fifth while in car oriented Atlanta this number is only 4 per cent.

In an article on the study New York Times columnist Paul Krugman blamed the inverse relationship between sprawl and social mobility on the poor (and carless) being unable to reach available jobs. “The city may just be too spread out,” he wrote about Detroit, “so that job opportunities are literally out of reach for people stranded in the wrong neighborhoods.”

This is no doubt part of the explanation, but it ignores the broader political impact of automobile generated sprawl. In Stop Signs: Cars and Capitalism on the Road to Economic, Social and Ecological Decay, Bianca Mugyenyi and I argue that the private car spurs right-wing (anti-egalitarian) politics by chaining would-be political actors to their jobs with debt, reducing intermixing between different social groups while in transit and atomizing communities into suburbs.

But it’s even more fundamental than that as the private car perpetuates class domination in a number of other ways. Since the dawn of the auto age, the car has been an important means for the wealthy to assert themselves socially. Prior to our modern day acquiescence to the automobile, a private car was viewed as an obtrusive and ostentatious display of wealth. A 1904 edition of the US farm magazine, Breeders Gazette, called automobile drivers, “a reckless, bloodthirsty, villainous lot of purse-proud crazy trespassers” while in 1906 Woodrow Wilson, then president of Princeton University, declared, “Possession of an auto car is such an ostentatious display of wealth that it will stimulate socialism.”

Among the wealthy, the automobile was popular partly because it reaffirmed their dominance over mobility, which had been undermined by rail. Prior to the train’s ascendance in the mid 1800s the elite traveled by horse and buggy, but the train’s technological superiority compromised the usefulness of the horse drawn carriage. Even for shorter commutes, streetcars became the preferred mode of transport by the early 1900s. More available to various classes of society, the train and streetcar blurred class lines. The automobile, on the other hand, provided an exclusive form of travel.

The automobile’s capacity to create social distance appealed to early car buyers. Prominent auto historian, James J. Flink remarked that, “the automobile seemed to proponents of the innovation, to afford a simple solution to some of the more formidable problems of American life associated with the emergence of an urban industrial society.”

In a car, one could remain separate from perceived social inferiors while in transit. Down the Asphalt Path’s Clay McShane writes about the elite’s disdain for public transit riders: “Trolleys were dirty, noisy, and overcrowded. It was impossible for middle-class riders to isolate themselves from fellow riders whom they perceived as social inferiors. Distancing themselves from blacks, immigrants, blue collar workers, and, in general those stereotyped as the ‘great unwashed,’ was often precisely why the middle classes had moved to the [streetcar] suburbs.”

The car has made it possible to live far from the poor (or anyone else without an automobile). In one of the most extreme examples of modern day segregation, people barricade themselves into gated communities. Across the U.S., especially in the car-dominated Southwest, millions of affluent families have retreated into these exclusive and exclusionary residences.

If we want a more egalitarian society we must reverse geographical segregation and build communities and cities where people can get around without the private automobile.

Yves Engler