Part 4, Section i:
4a. The Illusion of Property Rights as a Capitalist Tool
If violence is consistently defined as harm or threat on living beings, why do we keep having conversations likening violence to burning buildings and broken windows? This gears the conversation towards philosophy and theory, but nonetheless has material manifestations. Massino De Angelis calls this the “value struggle,” in which the antagonism that was previously hegemonically forced is made present, calling into question the values of the opposing groups. If the oppressed group does not value what is a “fact of life” for the oppressor — for example, the white oppressor’s acceptance that racism and police brutality are merely a “fact of life” versus the oppressed’s desire to subvert the system that makes this possible — then there is a value struggle.
By applying this theory to greater society, we can see that marginalized groups are rendered speechless in the face of dominant relational modes; that border line between opposing groups is the line of conflict. The value struggle only exists by questioning what was previously thought to be unquestionable. Any time dominant structures are questioned, there is a struggle of values between opposing groups.
In the “Second Treatise of Government,” philosopher John Locke – whose thoughts formed the basis for some of the United States’ most foundational values – explains that the law protects bodies and their commodities, inextricably linking people to their property. This equivalence of human rights to property rights is capitalist in nature and yet, self-proclaimed liberals’ own ideology finds this admittance too embarrassing to mention, which is why people are so quick to defend property even while acknowledging that property damage hardly subverts the institutions it symbolizes. Riots serve to illuminate this painfully embarrassing equivalence and the ensuing value struggle. The consequential denial of the capitalist superstructure is second-nature to anyone who has not yet divested from capitalist ideology.
Capitalism is deeply entrenched in the fabric of the country, but questioning and re-inventing meaning is necessary to bring change. People must have their core values challenged to then challenge the system they say needs to be changed. Post-structuralist thinkers have agreed that the “subject” and “subject position” are a socially-constructed process and position, respectively, by which an individual can speak and be understood as a speaker. The agreement that these are socially-constructed inevitably verifies that they can also be socially-challenged and thus, changed. Forming new subjects and abolishing old ones necessitates violence because none, especially those with the greatest power, will relinquish that power without violence. Frantz Fanon explains that violence on the colonizer’s body is required to disprove its inviolability; the post-colonial subject is thus borne of violation.
To defeat capitalist social structures, one must defeat what is at the heart of capitalism: the value of property over life.