Why Are the Working Class in America Still Not Rising Up in Revolution?

C’mon, people, what are we waiting for? Do you really want to wait and see what “rock bottom” of this system will look like before we do what needs to be done? (Image courtesy of The Scholarly Kitchen)

Living a comfortable or at least bearable material existence under capitalism has not simply become harder for the American working class over the years. The usual hardships have begun very noticeably escalating over the past two administrations, the one-two blows of the Biden and Trump 2.0 regimes. Things had grown much harder from the Bush years onwards, but never has the war-mongering and cost of survival increased as quickly as it has during the past five years.

Let’s take a look at this phenomenon and try to explain two things. First, let’s explain what is going on. And secondly, to try and explain the psychological reasons for the American people’s continued apathy & failure to act on a wide scale despite the escalation of our already bad situation.

War, and Rumors of More War

America is now teaming with Israel — its main ally in world conquest hiding behind a Zionist virtue shield — to go to war with much of the Middle East, including a horrendous genocide in Gaza and the West Bank. It is also still fighting a never-ending and incredibly costly (in every sense of the word) proxy war with Russia via Ukraine, and is now planning wars with Venezuela and China (the latter via using the political situation regarding Taiwan as an excuse in a similar manner to how it’s using Ukraine as an excuse to provoke and attack Russia).

The way the U.S. government is pushing for war with the likes of Iran, Venezuela, China, and (more directly) with Russia is going to result, for a while, in lots of profits for the Military Industrial Complex (MIC). That is its main goal, along with, they hope, conquest of new territory and control over new mineral resources. But over the long haul it is going to require massive expenditures of money (that will not be spent on the working class or needed infrastructure here) and effort that will ultimately pit it and its two most frequent allies, Britain and Israel, against the rest of the world. China, Russia, Venezuela, and Iran are powerful countries in terms of military might, and saying the U.S. will be foolish for engaging all of them at once sans the support of most of the rest of the world is a massive understatement.

Yet, the U.S. government is confident that the patriotic spirit in the American people will rise with support over this third world war that America will be at the epicenter of. That we will be waving flags and forcing ourselves to believe that the U.S. government and its few allies are the equivalent of the Justice League attempting to defeat the Legion of Doom. Again.

In other words, they are counting on our political naivete and instinct towards mindless tribalism to remain strong. And they further count on our ability to forget the many lessons of the most recent past (i.e., since the beginning of the still-young 21st century, only 25 years in at this writing) and to dismiss all such warnings and reminders as “whataboutism”; or “Welp, since a Democratic administration is calling for the war, there’s at least a somewhat greater chance it’s for noble reasons this time”— despite what happened under the Obama and Biden administrations, and from Hillary Clinton and John Kerry when each served as Secretary of State.

The Rising Cost of Everything as We Approach a Post-Labor Era

During the Biden administration the working class couldn’t help but notice that the prices of everything were rising faster than ever before — while monetary compensation from our low-paying service sector and gig economy was simultaneously growing smaller. Not only that, but what was left of the social programs created during the Roosevelt and Johnson administrations to help the exponentially more impoverished working class survive during decades of high inflation were being increasingly starved & gutted.

While at the same time, the usual right-wing propaganda demanding that workers be “self-reliant” and derision of such programs as “socialism”; or deriding them for allegedly threatening to create yet another generation of idle people who “don’t want to work for a living” continued at least as much as ever before despite the harsh reality becoming more obvious.

All of this ignoring the following facts:

The economy is not what it was even 20 years ago.

High-paying jobs are increasingly scarce, which means that younger generations of workers are forced to deal with an economic environment in which the jobs most of those not born into rich families can get do not compensate them enough to afford the basic costs of living, let alone actually enjoy their lives the way nepo-kids surviving on hefty trust funds do (which, along with mass censorship of working class voices on social media, was the main cause of the recent mass uprising of Gen Z workers in Nepal).

This is showing us that the idea of long hours of hard work being inherently good for us and a sign of decent character was a sham pushed on us by capitalists who exploited this type of moral platitude for its own benefit. It has shown many younger workers since the neoliberal era started that they would not be rewarded for such a work ethic but simply used and discarded at the whim of their employers. They were expected to live a life of perpetual hardship, with that life revolving around a constant struggle to stay off the streets and get enough food rather than one of material security and the accompanying peace of mind.

Which has resulted in these younger generations watching the for-profit medical and Big Pharma systems prosper from the increasing instances of stress and mental illness caused by living in such an environment. And this in an era where technology has advanced to the point where human drudgery can be abolished and an abundance provided for everyone, with remaining work designed to enhance our lives rather than make a hefty profit for the few at the expense of the rest of us breaking both our backs and our bank. And all to keep that handful of people in lives of obscene luxury that we can only experience in our hopes and daydreams.

The capitalist class are needing our labor power less and less as automation and AI advance at an extreme rate.

The above is nothing new, and it became more pronounced for Americans after many Asian and European nations recovered from having their infrastructure devastated during World War II by the mid-1970s. This made capitalist employers less tolerant of providing decent pay and benefits in exchange for hard work and ushered in the neoliberal era of today, the final phase of capitalism.

Those who continue to claim that this is “not” capitalism and that a return to some form of “true” capitalism prior to this era is the solution are overlooking the fact that the technological circumstances under which that supposedly “authentic” or “better” type of capitalism thrived is no longer with us. It cannot be “recovered” just as we cannot time travel back to the world as it once was before the material advances of today had occurred.

This is why Keynesian capitalism, i.e., Social Democracy, is being heavily challenged and eliminated in other parts of the world that retain it; and why the social programs instituted under Roosevelt’s “New Deal” and Johnson’s “Great Society” in America have been gradually whittled down over the past five decades since being established in the ’30s and the ’60s respectively.

As an example of the latter, SNAP benefits suddenly came under siege during the final months of 2025 due to the government shutting down under an alleged impasse between the Repubs and the Dems arguing over a government spending plan, including for enhanced funding of “Obamacare.” A shutdown of this extent never happened before, and it was accompanied by a seemingly callous disregard by both Dems and Repubs over how this shutdown would mean that disbursements of SNAP benefits — which so many impoverished workers depend on to afford even a modicum of groceries, especially now — got suspended for an indefinite period starting in November of ’25.

That, along with the fact that many government employees would not be getting paid during that same interim of undetermined length. But did those plutocratic sociopaths seem overly concerned about that?

And then came the Supreme Court ruling backing up Trump’s refusal to spend $6 billion dollars in contingency funds to provide at least a partial disbursement of the SNAP benefits despite lower appellate courts decreeing that he was required to do so. And this despite his having just sent $20 billion — sufficient to eliminate homelessness in America in one fell swoop — to Argentina last week as a “loan” to “stabilize” the country, a move which many are claiming is actually a gift to hedge fund owners; and sending billions to Israel alone over this past year. So much for claims that he doesn’t have the money to fund SNAP on a contingency basis.

Of course, the Dems have opposed none of the above, content with using demands to continue funding Medicaid and “Obamacare” as their excuse for holding fast on the impasse.

All of this has a strange performative aspect to it, as if withholding funds for all of these things is the main point, and is something which both wings of the Duopoly are in accord with. Why? Because both serve the capitalist class, not the working class. And both are determined to raid what is left of our treasury to make the most of out of money while its value is still viable.

Why is Money Worth So Little These Days?

And why is money growing less valuable at such a rapid pace? Because as of the past few years, the government has been printing up an average of $1 trillion in new money every 100 days, first off to preserve the opulent status quo of the wealthy in the face of the great decrease in labor’s spending ability; and secondly for more subsidized investment in automation & AI to displace more workers and thus relieve corporations of human labor expenses (e.g., wages, medical insurance, retirement funds, benefits); and thirdly, to keep military spending high as war & conquest of the world’s resources becomes more integral to America’s economic index.

As a result, in just one year the value of what money will buy has decreased by an unprecedented 5%. This is one reason why we have noticed such a sizable increase in the cost of groceries, fast food, and so many other services & items between the onset of the COVID pandemic and the present time, with the increases between the last two years of the Biden administration and the first year of the Trump 2.0 administration really standing out.

This has caused an hefty increase in big business, particularly Big Agri-Business that now dominates the farming industry, to attempt to bolster profits by fostering artificial scarcity. They do this by deliberately under-producing sufficient food to feed the masses and taking their time in allowing stores to re-stock their shelves. That way, the financial value of food rises like mercury in a thermostat during a massive heat wave. The price of food goes up and up, something that both working class consumers and small grocery store owners suffer from. And they have been doing this to such an extent during the past few years that workers have begun complaining to a huge degree. In fact, a failure to do anything about this throughout the Biden/Harris administration, and having no solutions for this problem as part of her election platform, is one of the factors that caused Harris a victory at the polls.

All of the above has forced politicians to actually publicly acknowledge what is going on, and scrambling to propose and implement half-assed measures to deal with it while being very careful not to challenge the status quo and piss off the 0.1% donors that pay for their campaigns and allow their opportunistic advancements up the political ladder. They have to serve the Big People for their own good, and that means only keeping up the mere appearance of helping the Little People that make up over 95% of the population.

The fact that the governor of my state actually sent rebate checks of $200.00 to all people living within it to offset the rise in groceries, despite that sum being so meager that it can only cover maybe a week and a half of shopping for the more frugal among us, shows just how bad the problem has become. And how important it is for them to create the illusion that they are “helping” us when in actuality that toss of crumbs was merely intended to (hopefully) pacify the masses of this state.

But the fact that they would part with even that paltry amount in today’s world shows that they are well aware that things are getting so bad that they are seriously starting to fear a sudden break-down of the system… or mass worker rebellion. And either before the capitalist class has had sufficient time to fully plan and coordinate how to maintain class rule once capitalism collapses completely.

This is also why despite all of this we have seen Zohran Mamdani win the election as mayor of the biggest city in the U.S. based on focusing on bread and butter related social programs (and not leading with the liberal gender-affirming program that is also part of his agenda) that the people desperately need on his platform. And why he was victorious despite the enormous onslaught of pro-establishment and Zionist-based attacks deriding these programs as “socialism” and absurdly accusing him of trying to establish Sharia Law across the city.

Why is the Rapid Growth of Automation and AI a Major Game-Changer That We Ignore at Our Peril?

Advancing automation displacing labor power as a cost-cutting measure for corporations under capitalism is nothing new. But recent advances over the past decade is accelerating this process at a rate not seen since the rapid pace of technical advances following the establishment of capitalism late in the 18th century up to the beginning of the Industrial Revolution as we know it today about a hundred years later. Only far more rapid-fire than that.

This rapidly increasing technological capability to produce an abundance for all while eliminating the need for human labor on many fronts is combining with the rapid devaluation of money for reasons described above to make the once-useful tool of currency to quickly go the way of the dinosaur. Stubborn attempts to keep money and finance a viable part of an advanced post-industrial world by both Right and Left factions alike is increasingly knocking heads with the material reality that is quickly forming before our eyes.

The 1% and their 0.1% overlords are well aware of this, so they’re milking us and the treasury of all the money they can while the system still runs on it while preparing for what comes once the advances in automation and AI reach the logical conclusion. They are well aware that this advanced post-industrial world where human drudgery and vast hours of human labor were once required, and which served as the sole valuable commodity of the working class under capitalism for many generations, can go in one of two directions — unless you count the third possible direction of a nuclear war that removes human civilization entirely. And you can guess which of the first two they are aiming for — and they may prefer the apocalyptic third possibility over that of the second.

The first such direction is a vast awakening of class consciousness among the working class to match that always enjoyed by the capitalist class — which will ultimately lead to the establishment of an Economic/Industrial Democracy.

Or not, in which case we face the second option, which is now happening: today’s capitalist class pushing us towards a dystopian post-capitalist society that has been referred to as Industrial Feudalism or, in more recent years, Techno-Feudalism. In short, that is a regressive system where we go back to a medieval-type relationship between the few at the top with the multitudes on the bottom, only with advanced technology and a digital, cloud-based information system enforcing the divide and the class rule itself.

Have you seen the increasing use of AI taking over the jobs of secretaries and even counselors? How about the automated check out counters taking the place of cashiers in supermarkets, which seems convenient on the surface but displaces workers and compels you to do that cash-out job for the company for free? Or, how about the automated ordering systems for restaurants that we’re seeing more and more of? And let’s not forget the robots replacing workers in the assembly and repair of cars and other devices.

This all translates into more corporate profits invested into developing such automation than “trickling down” to worker’s wages and benefits. Which translates into less and less workers being hired, along with less wages being paid to those who remain due to labor power being worth far less than ever before — just as their dollar has less value than ever before.

Which then results in less worker capability of buying services and products. Which in turn puts capitalists and government officials who serve them on the defense, compelling them to compensate corporations for the loss of worker-purchased revenue over the short haul by printing out more “bail out” money. And they do this while simultaneously cutting social programs that support workers under financial distress so there is more money to be sent upwards.

Which, as noticed, further distresses workers as capitalists scramble with the emerging “feudal tech lords” or “cloud capitalists” (i.e., the 0.1%) to figure out a way to keep this heavily lop-sided relationship in wealth disbursement going indefinitely even as the value of money and worker’s ability to eke out a living are being substantially lowered at a very rapid pace.

The end result for workers is not going to be good if we continue either our apathetic refusal to do anything about this problem or our stubborn loyalty to the existing system that we have been conditioned to possess.

Why Are So Many Working Class People Acting as if They Do Not Give a Shit?

That is the central question to this post. And there are four main reasons for this, I believe:

1. Learned helplessness. The masses have become indoctrinated with the belief that there’s nothing they can do about the problems outside of the traditionally accepted way of doing it. And that is voting for different billionaires during intermittent election cycles and hoping that one of them, eventually, will do something for us. And this despite the dramatic evidence to the contrary recently provided by the working class of Nepal (even though they didn’t go far enough after demonstrating how powerful the working class is once the vast majority of us decide that we’ve had enough and want fundamental change).

2. They have been indoctrinated with the belief that the current system, no matter how bad, is nevertheless better than any other possible system. The very word “socialism” has been tainted in the eyes of most people by unjustly conflating it with failed “state capitalism” (i.e., Leninism) or forms of Social Democracy that were thwarted by Western intervention via CIA and other military and/or economic interference with their governments and election systems. Venezuela is a prime example of the latter.

3. People tend to stick with what they are used to rather than take a chance on something new and different, based on security with the familiar. This is something Thomas Jefferson himself complained about in the Declaration of Independence based on how difficult it was to get the Colonies to finally dispense with the long obsolete system of feudalism and replace it with capitalism, a more progressive system for that era: “… all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed.” So, in short, things simply haven’t gotten bad enough yet for people to accept reality and to rally accordingly.

4. People feel too oppressed and weary to focus the time and energy into the needed revolution. This is due to all of the above causing workers to spend an increasing number of hours trying to make more and more money to deal with how quickly prices are going up, how rapidly the value of their money is decreasing, and how low-paying most of their jobs are. Hence, they are in constant frantic survival mode and feel that they must spend all of their time when they are not eating (what food they can afford) , sleeping (what hours they can manage), or shitting (assuming their toilet isn’t broken & they can’t afford a new one) focused on maintaining their existence and not with activism. This is also clearly planned by the few benefitting from this system.

So, What Should We Do?

The answer to that question is obvious, but the answer must start with this: wake up, dispense with your stubborn loyalty to what you are used to, and face reality. The capitalist system is obsolete, and it was never intended to be eternal nor to function in an environment of advanced industrial capability, as such an environment did not exist when it was created. It therefore needs to be replaced by a new system that builds on what capitalism made possible, much as it did with feudalism before it.

We are not going to be able to return to some earlier, supposedly “better” iteration of capitalism that only functioned as it did due to an earlier point in history, including earlier points during the Industrial Revolution when material factors did not yet reach the point where we’re at now. That ship has sailed with the world it once existed in, and it’s no longer viable to the world we live in now.

And most importantly, we need to make a choice. Do we let the ruling class push us into the industrial/techno feudal system as per their obvious plan? Or do we take matters into our own hands by firing all of those parasites in Washington, the Governor’s Mansions, and the corporate exec boardrooms and establishing social ownership of the advanced automation that could make our lives, and that of our descendants, far more pleasant and democratic than what we are experiencing now?

We are going to get exactly what we deserve as a result of either decision — as will the rest of the world. Please keep that in mind as you think things over and decide whether to do something or nothing at all.