Class, Community, and Revolution
Or: what does it look like to be a class traitor in America now?
“Dress suitably in short skirts and strong boots, leave your jewels in the bank, and buy a revolver.”
Those words were said by one of my favorite class traitors in all of history, the Countess Constance Markievicz. Socialist, suffragette, Irish revolutionary, and all-around badass. Born into an aristocratic Anglo-Irish family, she spent her entire adult life fighting for Irish independence, advocating for the working class, and feeding the poor. She died at age 59 in a public ward because she had given away all her wealth; it’s said that she died “among the poor where she wanted to be.”
I’ve been thinking about class traitors a lot recently. As we face down authoritarianism in the US and an oligarchy that has captured control of every branch of government, I find myself wondering about the role of the millions of well-meaning but not especially revolutionary affluent and upper-middle class people in this country, and how we support the work of building people power. Can we build real community and solidarity across class lines?
It’s clear that, to have any hope of dismantling the systems that keep people under the thumb of oppression and poverty, we need to wrest power away from the wealthy. It’s clear that wealth inequality is as dangerously acute as any time in American history. It’s clear that we’re ruled by oligarchs who would rather take down civilization and a habitable planet than give up power and resources, and the systems that keep those things rushing upwards into their hands.
Naomi Klein and Astra Taylor recently wrote a brilliant and sobering piece for The Guardian, “The Rise of End Times Fascism” (this is really a must-read, folks). In it, they write:
“The governing ideology of the far right in our age of escalating disasters has become a monstrous, supremacist survivalism.
It is terrifying in its wickedness, yes. But it also opens up powerful possibilities for resistance. To bet against the future on this scale – to bank on your bunker – is to betray, on the most basic level, our duties to one another, to the children we love, and to every other life form with whom we share a planetary home. This is a belief system that is genocidal at its core and treasonous to the wonder and beauty of this world.”
The wealthiest and most powerful people in the world, people who control our government and global economic system, have decided to let it all burn, assuming their wealth and technology will save them. Now, not all rich people are as psychopathic and mind-bogglingly evil as the Elon Musks and Peter Thiels of the world. But they will, nevertheless, find themselves with a choice: uphold the systems that have benefited them so much, to the detriment of most of the rest of humanity, or join the masses to fight for something better for all of us.
So I’ve been wondering: Can rich, well-meaning, mostly White people really be trusted to be part of an anti-capitalist revolution? Could we have a Constance Markievicz in America in 2025?
I ask this question from the position of an affluent person. Specifically, I’m solidly a member of what I’ve recently seen termed as the “comfort class” - someone who makes a middle class income, but doesn’t have to worry about financial precarity because I have generational wealth to fall back on. An unexpected medical bill or major home repair isn’t a source of stress because I have parents who can help. I think this term is so instructive, and captures the reality of a pretty large contingent of folks who’d probably rather not admit to their privilege.
I’m perhaps hyper-aware of the ways that my financial situation can create barriers to building the connections, community, and solidarity I seek. I’m also always trying to put myself and my experiences not just in an American context, but a global context. After all, everything about the life I live is dependent on the resources and labor of poor countries and poor people around the world. So, I can’t honestly say that I’m committed to fight against capitalism, extraction, and wealth inequality without conflict and compromise. Nor can I can say that I understand the lived realities of those on the losing end of this system. I have a pretty strong academic and intellectual understanding of capitalism and the ways it fails people and the planet. But does that academic understanding outweigh my positionality as a beneficiary of this system?
I’m a wealthy White lady. What business do I have seeking to solve problems I don’t experience? And moreover, can I be in real, genuine community and solidarity with those who suffer under the system that supports me?
I’ve written before about how much I hate “wealth culture” and my unease with being a “rich kid.” I can’t remember a time in my life when I didn’t associate wealth with injustice, when I didn’t have some intuitive sense that one person’s resource hoarding is another person’s poverty. I couldn’t really tell you where this came from. Class consciousness was never really a thing in my household. We engaged in charity, not solidarity. The only explanation I have is my brain’s particular wiring; that is, having ADHD and a couple attendant characteristics, namely justice sensitivity and social anxiety. And so, always feeling like an outsider, always identifying with the underdog or whoever holds less power, being painfully aware of what people might think of me, and having really big feelings about right and wrong and fairness.
That said, I was a capitalism reformist for a long time. But the older I’ve gotten, the more things I’ve become financially responsible for, the more I think about class. Nothing has radicalized me more than having kids and realizing, even with all the resources I had available, it was still the hardest thing I’ve ever done. To leave parents and kids without even the most basic resources - healthcare, childcare, adequate food and shelter - especially here in the wealthiest country in the history of the world, is an unspeakable cruelty and injustice.
But the reality is, having kids and a mortgage and a pretty good health insurance plan through my husband’s job has also created a kind of anxiety about the loss of this security. When I think about my class traitor heroes like Constance Markievicz, I can’t help but think about everything me and my family have to lose if I were to get so radical, so revolutionary. And there’s the rub with us rich folks, right?
This is why we fall short, and I would imagine, this is why it’s hard to trust a rich person working to build a better world. This is why rich people, if they’re left of center, are almost always reformist, not radical. Most of us don’t know enough about capitalism and its inner workings, so we can’t accept that inequality and exploitation are at it’s core, and it can’t be reformed. Rather than work to dig up and compost this poison root, rich people tend to do other things that ultimately maintain the status quo. We fundraise for Democratic candidates, sit on boards of charities, and engage in philanthropy that isn’t designed to fundamentally change the system, but simply to help fill in the gaps through which so many people fall. Add to this the general (and wildly wrong-headed) societal narrative that wealthy people are smart and capable and good decision-makers, and we’ve got a recipe for rich people dictating the business of social change and ensuring that we get incremental reforms rather than transformational solutions.
In the past few months, I’ve been meeting with a group of progressive organizers in my community working to build out networks of mutual aid and support. We are, so far, a group that is almost entirely White, and (I’m making assumptions here) largely financially secure. I think many of us have a pretty strong intellectual foundation in radicalism, but whether that translates to radical action remains to be seen. We’re working on a zine about community preparedness; we’re having conversations about creating a local free meal program open to anyone. But something someone said last month has been rattling around in my brain and I can’t escape it.
“I wonder if our community just has too much wealth to really do anything radical?”
I wonder, too. And I wonder if we can really build community - true and trusting community - across class lines. Maybe some of us can. I certainly hope we can. And I hope I can find my place as an affluent person in this existential fight.
One thing I feel pretty confident about is that we need fewer rich people leading. If we can do anything of value in the fight for a livable planet and equitable and sustainable social and economic systems for all, it would be to step back and mobilize our resources to support and uplift those on the frontlines. We can redistribute wealth and power to directly support the rebels and revolutionaries, not to reputation-launder it in nonprofits controlled by wealthy board members and professional-class reformists.
I wrote recently about how much I’ve been enjoying the show Andor, a Star Wars spinoff. It’s been interesting to see how it treats the role of rebels across class lines. With the exception of one character, a wealthy woman who puts herself in physical danger and harm’s way to fight on the frontlines, the role of the affluent characters in the rebellion is to mobilize money and resources, and redistribute it to support rebel actions. One of the characters, a wealthy politician, is finding that playing politics and supporting the cause through the existing political system is proving futile. Appealing to the better nature of her fellow politicians isn’t getting results.
But in the real world, these are the kinds of rebels we dismiss as too violent, too radical. We police their methods. We call them terrorists. We are living in the heart of the Empire, after all, and there’s a limit to how much we’ll support the rebellion.
It seems to me that either sharing resources to let the oppressed lead, or really getting our hands dirty ourselves, are probably the best and most effective ways to make a difference. But that is a tall order to ask of a rich American.
Maybe being in community with those on the frontlines isn’t so much about being trusted friends and comrades, as it is about seeking to be kept honest. I want to be challenged when my fear and self-interest get in the way of dismantling oppressive systems. I want to be reminded that degrees, careers, titles, and money don’t give me the right to lead or decide how to fix a system that works to keep me privileged at the expense of so many others.
What does it look like to be a class traitor in 21st century America, where the ideology of apocalyptic capitalism has such a stranglehold on our imaginations? I don’t really know. But I sure hope we find out.
Beautiful essay on being a class traitor and how difficult that can be! I loved reading about Countess Constance Markievicz, I had never heard of her before. However, she's not the only class traitor in existence, and so many of us have been organizing and figuring out the best way to use our current resources and also how to show up best in movements without being disruptive :)
I became a leftist in 2020 due to a cushy WFH tech job and seeing the BLM uprisings. It felt unfair that I had so much when others had so little. I found a group called Resource Generation, full of other young class traitors with wealth/class privilege that helped me make sense of that confusion and grief. Michael Gast's newsletter Organize the Rich, here on Substack, is also a fantastic read with a bunch of resources on different class traitor groups, interviews, and history.
It's interesting that your progressive group seems to be made up of folks with financial security, and yet money seems to be the elephant in the room. I wonder what about happen if you dug more into that as a way to figure out what resources you have access to AND also where your limitations are when it comes to creating systemic change. RG has a practice of telling "money stories" where you discuss your family's history around wealth/class privilege, the lessons around money you were taught, and what you've learned instead over your life.
I've been in organizing situation where it feels like you're trying to make something happen to no avail, and I've found it's helpful to take a step back when that happens. I wonder what would happen if you spent some time in the next few meetings sharing money stories and talking more openly about class. And then you could try discussing this idea of 'what should the role of individuals with financial security be in the world we're trying to build?'. I bet you'd all be looking at your groups situation more clearly, even if it doesn't immediately yield a perfect plan or roadmap :)
The system makes it hard for people who are not wealthy to volunteer or run for office. I joined my local food pantry board and it is hard for me to make time to meet the board demands when the other members are mostly retired wealthy folks that want to discuss what cocktails to serve at a donor dinner while I am trying to run a business (and I still want to have time to volunteer at the food pantry). We want to recruit a Spanish speaking board member because we have trouble serving that community but certain members are dismissive of the local Latino community because most of them are working three jobs and supporting relatives and don’t have time to volunteer in the community or capacity to donate money.