💾 Archived View for library.inu.red › file › jeff-shantz-the-real-dangerous-classes.gmi captured on 2023-01-29 at 11:35:35. Gemini links have been rewritten to link to archived content
➡️ Next capture (2024-07-09)
-=-=-=-=-=-=-
Title: The Real “Dangerous Classes” Author: Jeff Shantz Date: 2010 Language: en Topics: class, class struggle, corporations, crime, workplace struggles, police, repression, black bloc, protest, g20 Source: Toronto Media Co-op
As the state capitalist carnivals of the G8/G20 got underway in cottage
country and Toronto widespread public outrage focused on the $1.3
billion security extravagance—the fences, security cameras, weapons,
vehicles and mass policing that have become regular features of such
elite get-togethers. While governments of the G8 claim the need for
austerity, social spending cuts and belt tightening for the working
classes, they have no shortage of public money to spend on their own
comfort. The Conservative government in Canada and its corporate
sponsors have justified these costs as necessary expenditures in the
face of protesters, and, in the words of Federal Minister of Trade and
Treasury Board president Stockwell Day “anarchist thugs.” By the second
day in Toronto police aggression and intimidation had imposed regular
random and unlawful searches, requests for identity papers, preemptive
arrests of supposed organizers and “leaders” and home invasions. Rubber
bullets and tear gas were used against people doing nothing more than
sitting outside the main detention centre.
All of this is part of the ongoing attempts by states and capital to
present the working classes and poor people as primary threats to social
order and peace. Certainly elites have been, and continue to be
effective in this. It has always been members of the working classes who
have bee the targets of criminalization. The legal and correctional
systems of liberal democracies are based on this. The overwhelming
majority of people processed through the criminal justice systems in
countries like Canada have been, historically and at present, working
class and poor people. Almost all involve petty property crimes and low
level street crimes. The working classes, especially the poorest, are
presented as the “dangerous class.” Their lives are more regulated, and
in neo-liberal regimes poverty is re-moralized as personal failing
rather than economic structure.
Crime problems are constructed as being “street crimes” (like vandalism
and property damage during a protest). “Suite crime,” the crimes of
elites (such as those meeting behind the security fence), receives
minimal attention and scorn. Yet suite crime is more injurious. While
street crimes tend to have a low level, localized impact involving one
or two people immediately involved (and often with no victim physically
harmed since damage is to property), suite crime typically has
profoundly injurious impacts on individuals (including workers who are
hurt and killed), communities and the environment. It is resonant damage
and spreads over space and time, impacting many (as in a chemical spill
that hurts the workers in a workplace, communities that have to be
evacuated and water and air that are contaminated) in way that goes well
beyond the impacts of street crime. Even if one considers the most
extreme instances, particularly involving death, the numbers are
telling. In Canada, in 2005, there were 655 murders. In 2007, 594
murders. These killings are the basis for much panic and anxiety and
serve to justify policy expenditures, “get tough on crime” legislation
and “law and order” media stories. Yet, if one looks at another cause of
avoidable death in Canada, namely workplace deaths, the comparison is
stark. In 2005, at least 1097 people died simply trying to earn a
living. In 2007, the number was more than 1005. In 2003, the homicide
rate was 1.7 per 100000 in Canada but the rate of work related deaths
was 6.1 per 100000. These numbers are actually undercounts since they
only record deaths accepted within workplace compensation boards (and
arbitrarily exclude dangerous occupations like farm labour). Image if
murders were recorded so ideologically. Yet there is little public
outcry, no legislative mobilization, and virtually no coverage. Indeed,
most of these deaths would fit the definition some give for crime:
avoidable misconduct that causes unnecessary harm to individuals or
society. When bosses cut corners on safety equipment and someone dies.
When there is a speed up or lack of training or working shorthanded and
someone is killed or maimed. When proper treatment facilities are not
installed in order to keep costs down and profits up. Occupational death
is the third leading cause of death in Canada (more than motor vehicle
accidents ). Yet suite crime is not treated as crime and politicians and
bosses responsible are not held to account. These harms will not even be
called what they are or considered crimes. The people responsible will
be treated as “community leaders” and feted during parties like the
G8/G20. They are the real dangerous classes—those who willfully and
carelessly damage individuals, communities and nature in pursuit of
property and profit. They, and their actions, are the real issue at
hand, not the street level actions of those who would oppose them.
All of this should provide some context as the moral panic around black
blocs, “violent protests” and anarchism unfolds in the days, weeks and
months to follow these G8/G20 meetings (and as other meetings occur and
are opposed). “Look, they have smashed some windows,” they cry. But what
of the smashed windows in abandoned workplaces in cities like Windsor
and Brantford, communities harmed by the social and economic policies
pushed by the G8 leadership and their corporate backers? “Oh, laws have
been broken,” they shout. But what of the lives broken in the pursuit of
profit? “Police were hurt.” But nothing otherwise of the hundreds of
thousands of workers hurt in Canada every year, simply trying to feed
their families. And the G8/G20 will only make these situations worse
with their agreement to halve deficits (which will of course be done
through cuts to social spending and public sector wages while giving tax
break gifts to investors).
Capital has been able to justify its personal harms and rationalize its
toll on society through a variety of ideological techniques. Next time I
look at three primary means by which the social and individual damage
caused by the most dangerous classes have been excused, their
perpetrators left off the hook, others made to pay the costs.