Acting in our own self interest, fellas
Learning who the real enemy is and escaping divide and conquer
I'm going to start somewhere unusual today, and that’s with the thought that wanting power is normal. People want power, and we should have it. We should have the power to have stable lives, we should have power over how society functions, and we should have the power to provide collectively for our needs without sacrificing all of our time to have our most basic needs met. It’s perfectly normal to not want to live our lives at the mercy of another human being, or a group of people, or some system that subjugates you.
There’s just one or two problems here. Luckily, they’re connected. The first is that we don’t have power; a tiny, tiny fraction of individuals in our society have any real power, and the second is that we shouldn’t even be thinking of power as something we personally have, or build. I’ll break it down.
In a healthy society, a real democracy, zero individuals would have the disproportionate power of an Elon Musk or a Donald Trump. Substantial change would come through the desire, actions, and will of the masses. But that’s not where we are, and in fact immense power concentrated in a handful of politicians and extremely wealthy people is directly contradictory to democracy — and we live in a lopsided society just like that. The concentration of power in the hands of the ruling class inherently comes along with the disempowerment of everyone else. That’s why extremely popular policies like universal healthcare go nowhere, while unpopular ideas like endlessly supporting genocide to the tune of billions of dollars march on.
And yet, despite the immense power some people wield, the most powerful forces in our society are still not individuals, but rather institutions and systems – the government, capitalism, corporations, etc. The vast majority of us were raised on such an ethos of individualism that we don’t see how the ruling class accumulated and maintains power by rejecting individualism where necessary, having class solidarity with one another, and forming collective institutions for their own benefit rather than constantly going at it all. And, therefore, we don’t realize that we need to do the same.
I started thinking about this piece after reading a post from Jeremy Flood, who works at the UAW. He said, “How do we win back young men? Through a union. A union, a pension, and a bomber jacket. This is the way.” And a short version of this piece is, he’s right. We know that a lot of young men have been and are being radicalized into the right. A significant part of the reason the ground is so fertile for this is the powerlessness (both real and perceived) of the 99%. Moving towards the far-right is an immensely harmful and misguided response to this situation, but (in part) a response nonetheless. The masses’ lack of power has always been an issue under capitalism, and throughout much of human history. But, for a relatively brief window, stretching from about the 1950s to the 2010s, a lot of Americans, and white men in particular, felt powerful. A combination of historical circumstances led the U.S. to unparalleled wealth and power post-WW2, such as the way that power was used to extract wealth from around the world, FDR and the continued ripple of his presidency, and workers getting organized into strong unions over decades, there was a period of plenty. These years of plenty are what conservatives look back on fondly, while of course ignoring the unions and the progressive policies that enabled the working class to share in the wealth over those decades.
During those years working people both felt powerful and, to a greater degree than today, were powerful. They were able to accumulate wealth, which feels a lot like power, and through their unions they were able to exercise collective power, both in politics and in their workplace. At least, for the first three decades or so. The gradual downfall of this time of abundance in the U.S. coincided neatly with the advent of neoliberalism, the attendant attack on organized labor, and the steady restructuring of society to benefit corporations and their owners. As neoliberalism progressed, working people grew less powerful. We now have almost no say in which legislation moves through Congress, our political contributions pale in comparison to the billions that billionaires spend, and only 10% of us are unionized. In short, we don’t have much power.
What conservative, misogynistic influencers offer above all else is a feeling of power. Men are told we can reclaim our rightful place in society, which is the dominant place. Setting aside the fact that these influencers often just want to make money off of men, I want to take a good close look at what power looks like in this ecosystem. It primarily looks like power over a woman, or women. It also looks like being ‘more dominant’ than other men, with the presumed power that comes along with that. But what about real power? What about the power to shape society or influence the course of events or change your community?
The big prize that’s dangled in lieu of real power is entrepreneurship. In reality, striking it rich to any substantial degree, to the degree where you can influence elections, let’s say, is a lottery at best. And we all know how the lottery works, almost nobody is going to win. So the truth is that 9,999 out of 10,000 of these boys who subscribe to the misogynist worldview are never going to hit that jackpot. Instead of riches most men who dive into this stuff will be strung along and will attempt to feel powerful by exercising some sort of power over women, particularly their partners.
We know how harmful and dangerous that is. Seeing women as equals, human beings, and unlearning misogynist bullshit shouldn’t be the battle that it is, but the long history of patriarchy and the recent upsurge of misogynist conservatism in service of the ruling class has made this fight necessary. What I want the men reading this in particular to have is a framework to talk to other men about it, and to be able to say to other men is that there’s a better way. And there is! The first thing to know, in my opinion, is that all power built on ‘dominating’ people who are more vulnerable than you isn’t real power at all. It gives you no ability to influence society, and doesn’t disrupt the people who actually hold power. The CEO of BlackRock, the President, and the board of Google aren’t threatened by men who try to dominate women, in fact they appreciate how you’re distracted and hurting someone who isn’t them.
So one thing we all need is to understand real power. We need to understand that trying to subjugate women, or scapegoat groups of people, is doing the work of the ruling class for them. Similarly, blaming the waves of feminism that have led more women to go to college and be doctors and lawyers and all that is doing the bosses’ work for them. Women’s equality isn’t inherently hurting men at all, even if when you’re used to being the dominant group others becoming equal might make you feel like you have less access or power, that isn’t really what’s happening here. The truth is there’s way more than enough to go around, for everyone. But a few people hoard the resources that could make life comfortable for everyone, and block systemic changes to society that could bring positive change.
The other day Jeremy Mohler wrote about this, saying that men should embrace a feminism for the 99%. He called it the version of feminism, “that sees capitalism as the primary problem harming all of us who work for a living. The version that blames billionaires, corporate executives, and Wall Street banks for hoarding power and resources from the rest of us, regardless of our gender.” And he’s right. This version of feminism is detailed by Cinzia Arruzza, Tithi Bhattacharya, and Nancy Fraser in their book Feminism for the 99 Percent. And, as Jeremy relays from their work, it “does not limit itself to ‘women's issues’ as they are traditionally defined. Standing for all who are exploited, dominated, and oppressed, it aims to become a source of hope for the whole of humanity ... a feminism for the 99 percent.”
This solidarity, this understanding that all of the struggles of the working class around the globe are tied together, is the only way we get free. Overcoming billionaires and their systems of capitalism and imperialism and white supremacy takes an enormous amount of power. And the number one tool that the bosses use to stop us from building that power to topple them off their perch is divide and conquer. That’s why they give podcasters the big bucks to tell us women are the problem, not the corporations poisoning our water and creating a world where microplastics inhabit our brains, and our balls. That’s why they tell us to blame women who run for office, instead of the billionaires who buy elections. The ruling class is afraid of us, and more than anything they’re afraid of the masses locking arms across lines of division and rising up.
We have to understand that our decline in perceived power, in other words the false idea that feminism has taken power from men, is used as a distraction from the decline in real power that’s come as a result of massive inequality and the decline of the union movement. The most powerful people on Earth want us to think that if we’re assholes to women we’ll magically make six figures. When they see men doing that they laugh all the way to the bank. What actually makes them scared is workers at Boeing shutting shit down, workers at Ford and Starbucks and media outlets and universities and Apple stores and poultry plants unionizing and exercising worker power, real power.
Knowing who to be angry at is part of the work of building a better world, a better life for each of us. Learning how to punch up, at the powerful, is part of this work too. The ruling class hopes we punch down and feel a brief, fleeting illusion of power before settling back into the boring routine of making them richer and richer. We need to know and understand real power, and know that it doesn’t come from individuals lashing out at whatever we can reach. Instead it comes from collectives building the power to achieve tomorrow what we, the workers, might not be able to achieve today. That’s how real power is developed, and that’s how we win.
Jeremy’s newsletter, which is particularly helpful for men but a great resource to share broadly: https://makemenemotionalagain.substack.com
Feminism for the 99%: https://www.versobooks.com/products/774-feminism-for-the-99
Organize a union: https://workerorganizing.org/
I used to approach feminism as "Well, there's nothing in it for me as a man, but it's important for women so I should support it." This liberal way of thinking about feminism is harmful, too, because it doesn't connect us. It keeps us apart and waters down what feminism and other stuff like that can be - revolutionary! ✊
Unions, people. Labor AND tenant unions. Get in one a.s.a.p. because we can only be crushed when we are tiny and alone. Stop paying the billionaires bills.