“Hinterland – America’s New
Landscape of Class and Conflict,” by Phil Neel, 2019
This book
illuminates what is going on in what the author calls ‘the hinterlands’ – U.S.
areas beyond the chosen central cities dominated by capital. These mostly U.S. coastal cities are now
surrounded by suburban areas of logistics, small factories and growing poverty
(the near hinterlands), then extending along transit and interstate lines
through exurbia (the middle hinterlands) into the far hinterlands, mostly rural
and mostly ignored. Neel grew up in a
rural part of Oregon
and his reflections, poetic and literary at times, show an understanding of what is going on
in the intermountain west of blasted towns and dying industries. He spent time in Seattle
with Occupy and visited Ferguson,
Missouri during the riots and
tries to give a geographic understanding to the new conditions of riot and
resistance.
One of his
key insights is about rural right-wingers like the Patriots, Oathkeepers,
3%ers and various kinds of Christian Dominionists and Sovereign Citizens that
ride the rural Northwest. In one county in Oregon’s
Rogue Valley the state is now so weak due to
layoffs that rightists are offering protection as a new police force. These
groups are also trying to provide other social services, as the local economy
and governments nose-dive. For leftists
paying attention, that means the beginning of ‘dual power' and activities similar to programs run by the Black Panther Party or Occupy. These rightist groups get their support from the sprawling European-American
exurbs and hinterlands. He makes the important
point that these movements are led by local businessmen not poor
proletarians. Because these bosses show
‘strength’ they can lure the local working-class into supporting them. Most rural workers are actually tuned out of
politics - apoliticals who don’t vote and are instead patching together scanty
and sometimes illegal livelihoods. The phrase
he uses several times is: “political
support follows strength.”
This is
well known to Marxists, as vacillating people follow those with the best organization. Neel maintains the present left ignores the
issues of physical and social power, instead focusing purely on program and in
this way fail to attract support.
The other
insight Neel has is something the rebellions against the racist police murders
in Ferguson, Missouri
and Baton Rouge, Louisiana heralded. Ferguson is
not a central city but instead a failing near hinterland suburb of St. Louis in which both
the geography of dispersed streets and dispersed state power meant the rebels
could hold out for a long time. The mostly whitish government lived on fees and
tickets from the darker population due to their falling budget. The rebels were able to resist both police
and national guard state power, as well as the soft-power brought
from St. Louis –
NGOs, liberal politicians, black misleaders and pacifists. For instance Jesse Jackson was booed when he
got to Ferguson.
Neel calls this a new turn in the class-based hinterland geographic resistance
to capital’s racism. However, his
narrative is not able to fit Baltimore’s
rebellion into that geography, nor Cairo’s.
 |
| Livin' Logistics |
As to the
uprising in Cairo, Egypt, Neel points out the street-fighting role of football
‘Ultras’ – people used to violence who were able to combat Egyptian police
and thugs hired by the government, leading the larger crowd. This led to citizens’ committees taking
control of many proletarian neighborhoods in Cairo for a time.
His attitude towards these football ‘ultras’ (who appeared in other European 'square' revolts) seems to favor some kind of U.S. ‘black
bloc’ tactic - though he never says so explicitly. He also points out that the urban gangs in Baltimore actually worked
with police against the street rebellion against another police murder.
Occupy Seattle moved out of a
central city park to a college campus park and then slowly disintegrated due to
anaconda pressure. I.E. a combination of
police actions and relentless but low-key opposition by the government and
school. Neel describes the somewhat dystopian near hinterlands south of the city
of Seattle inhabited by the dispossessed working class and a familiar sprawl of
logistical warehouses, ports and freeways. He sees this area as the coming battleground where global supply chains can be crippled, the population is not friendly to the state and repressive power is weakest.
What Neel
doesn’t mention is that in order to develop a real opposition in the U.S. it must
take permanent organizational forms, not just spontaneous and short-run
rebellions. Nor does he mention the
need to be inside ‘the final wall of the fortress.’ I.E. the tactic of the strike is never mentioned. Strike and riot can be combined, as we've learned from the French and others. Neel is an
anarcho-communist, so this doesn't occur to him.
He does note the polarization in the working class between the decreasing number with
decent health care, housing, pensions and 401Ks versus those who work for
weekly wages and few benefits, but he can’t seem to bridge that gap. Which is admittedly a rather large one.
Among his
many well-written poetic impressions, Neel points out the odd character of the present: “There is no final crisis, just the
management of a wider collapse.”
This book
blends with other recent books on the subject that look into conditions in the
rural and marginal U.S. Other reviews on this topic below, use blog
search box upper left: “Riot, Strike, Riot,” “This Land,” “On New
Terrain,” “What is the Matter With the Rural U.S.?” “Angry White Men,”
“Damnation.” “Red
State Rebels,” “The
Invisible Committee,” “The Football Factory,” "Value Chains."
And I
bought it at May Day Books for a bigger discount than you will get anywhere
else in town!
Red Frog
December 6,
2019
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