Part 1 of ‘Grief & Healing Under the Capitalist Mode of Production’
By nature of being in the proletariat, we are all closer to death and loss than we should be. Among ourselves; our family, friends, acquaintances; our comrades; we are thrust into situations of unnecessary death and harm.
This proximity to trauma and close loss does not define our class position, but it is an unavoidable result of our situation. We live in a world system built to extract our labor power, to relentlessly consume our “muscles, nerves, bones, and brains” to maximally produce commodities. Capitalism is not only physically predatory, it also deprives us of life-enriching connections with others. We lose the satisfying long-term built connections with each other, to be replaced by short-term coping mechanisms that capitalist firms can more easily sell to us. The emergent intention of the capitalist mode of production is precisely to extract and redirect our ability to shape the world around us—to coerce us to use our capacity to labor toward the goals of commodity production and profit for the few.
As the capitalist mode of production wears us down, it is also ready to toss us aside once we are no longer profitable laborers for the particular moment of market competition. In response to this credible threat of dismissal from our jobs, we subject ourselves to the command structures of our workplaces. People take on violence and trauma from the hierarchical modes of domination that are necessary to maintain a competitive level of capitalist production.
Such anger, hurt, and pain of class violence would best be taken out against the structural problems of capitalist domination. But in lieu of a mass movement—it tends to get unfairly taken out on ourselves and our close interpersonal relationships.
Class societies breed unhealthy interpersonal relationships and unhealthy coping mechanisms. The trauma of class society gets redirected into perpetuating the traumas of individualist, gender, race, and age divisions. All of this interpersonal violence transforms us into less creative, less vibrant, less agential people—it breeds addiction and depression, trauma and misapplied trauma responses. The cruel irony of it all is that this also wears down our ability to labor to support each other.
Even when we want to resist, capitalism’s systems of violence keep us in line—through the direct violence of the state; the emotional stunting of divide-and-conquer political ideologies; relations of domination within workplaces; and the hands-free violence of holding our housing, food, water, and health at hostage if we don’t comply. These systems already hurt us in everyday life, but they intensify exponentially when we try to resist. Resistance is necessary, even as we know that the capitalist class will try to hold on to their power structure by depriving the proletariat of our needs. They often end up killing us if they feel the need to make an example to the rest.
Crucial things that humans consistently find to result in satisfying lives are being stripped away from us—our ability to freely develop ourselves and affect the world around us, and our opportunities to make deep connections with other human beings. It’s a taxing existence, and I want to reflect on how we can possibly come to terms with the loss and death imposed on us. We must be able to comport ourselves with weight of it all if we can possibly move forward, to fight for a world where such deep suffering is not built into our social relations.
I write this keeping in mind the deaths I have experienced around me—of a comrade I met through tenant union organizing, of a comrade I met through houseless mutual aid organizing, of a friend’s father, of a friend I met when they were living on the streets; of a union sibling’s dear dog, of my grandparents—the list goes on. I also hold in mind the eventual loss of people I know and love today. And, I reluctantly admit, there will be a point when I am also no more: dead as a fucking doornail 🫡