What is Poverty? There are two kinds of poverty: Industrialized poverty, the poor quality of the landscape, the poisoned water and polluted air our communities are forced to endure. The other is a culture of life not based on accumulation, living on the edge of society, tokenized by the left and pandered to by the benevolent. Their communities are ravaged by the rich and destroyed by an uncaring shadow economy built to sate their misery. - Heretic and Wombat, Columbus is Dead #5

Middle class anarchists shouldn't feel ashamed of their privilege. They should embrace it and use it to their advantage. In a country like America, being middle class is being part of the majority, it is being normal. The middle class can easily understand the power of their accumulation and their economic power is expressed in the spaces they control, which is the community assembly, the small business and the union hall. Anarchy from the middle reflects the ethics of democracy and individual initiative in the same areas the middle class control, with worker co-operatives and industrial unionism as the suggested alternatives to liberalism. In recent years it has become obvious that anarchy is growing, but as it grows, a level of exclusion becomes apparent.

This exclusion isn't authoritarian. With power over the perceived objectivity of the economy in the hands of corporate and state elites, the middle class is as excluded from decision making as those who are poor and exploited. Anarchists, as champions of individual initiative, work to expand the areas where resistance can be found. With apathy so high in American society, its hard to distinguish that a class difference has occurred until the autonomous spaces and institutions of anarchy have created ethical cultures. These ethics are often producer-oriented or consumer-oriented and many books have been written about how these two ethical view points feel some sort of dichotomy based on their perspective. The dogmatics of producer-oriented anarchy accuse the consumer-oriented anarchy of "lifestylism" as if they weren't practicing a lifestyle that has historically been used to raise the poor working class into the middle class. In response the (anti-) consumer culture accuse the producers of "workerism" as if the consumers weren't privileged from a previous generation's labor.

To some, the link between the poor and the working class seems unified...but it isn't. In the back of many radical social theories are systems and mechanics meant to coerce the poor into work or face exclusion. Many of these theorists make such a fetish of "working" class culture they forget that the poor were displaced into work and didn't have a choice as the trade guilds did. The poor didn't dream up the workers' paradise, a contrived utopia created as an alternative to capitalist civilization. Suggestions of a workers' civilization are merely a compromise between the "working" and the poor. With most unions outside of the working poor, some unions have the nerve to hire the homeless to picket on their behalf, exposing a divide between the middle and the poor as far as who has power in our present society.

Many people hate work, but feel compelled to do it. The need for work was artificial before civilization domesticated most of the wilderness. Feudalism and slavery had many edicts and laws built on keeping peasants, slaves and serfs on the farm, plantation or manor. With the liberation of the slave into poverty, working for industrial capitalism became the only perceived option for the mass that became the working poor of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The increase in misery was astounding, but there was "no going back" as industrial nations competed for dominance. Anarchism was born from the ideas of progress, sometimes hinting that an anarchist society would work less with more automation and more control over business decision-making. Classic anarchism aimed towards a unity of the working and the poor in a society built for the benefit of the working. The dichotomy of their unity wasn't apparent because this society could still benefit the poor more than the society liberalism created.

Today, progress has become alien to the interests of most people and for good reason. The advantages of the middle class are perceived as hollow for the children of this privilege. Once needs are taken care of, the middle class consumer culture continues to demand accumulation for the sake of profit and sold to increase the convenience of middle class life. Those that can't accept middle class life often go through an existential crisis where they are reabsorbed into the middle class with prescription drugs and counciling, ultimately re-normalized as a worker. Those that reject this normalization often become anarchists, but then fall into rejecting the consumptions of civilization, which in turn becomes a consumer culture as ethical alternatives are sought. This isn't necessarily a bad thing.

The damage of middle class life is reflected in the poisoned atmosphere of the poor, who often live in the neighborhoods devastated by the creation of industrial consumer goods. Work and consumerism here become a matter of paying medical bills and funeral bills, placing the "privileged" worker in subjective poverty compared to the "wealth" the "good job" at the factory or plant has given them. The damage is also reflected in the poor ghettos that serve the interests of middle class consumerism. These neighborhoods are often placed in dangerous landscapes with fast cars, few buses and no sidewalks, exposing in who's interest these sections of town were created.

Many essays from anarchists reflect a desire to touch on or tackle the middle class privilege that most anarchists enjoy. However, what reeks from most of these articles is the moralism and guilt associated with these issues. Economic privilege is handled in the same way that liberal identity politics is and words like "classism" are thrown around, but with little theoretic coherence to back it up. The reason is that the accusers themselves are often middle class but don't understand how they can do anything about the situation other than show moral support and perhaps some solidarity through action.

Democracy is the key to expanding the middle class and the worker society. The stronger advocates want to marginalize both the rich and the poor, even the elimination of these classes is seen as an advantage. The growth of democracy measures middle class power against the rich, while the more radical it becomes, the more inclusive of the middle class it grows. When democracy is king, the rich can't control and the poor are given a choice to contribute if they want to live in the society of the middle, the society of the worker.

If the middle class can grow and expand, so too can democracy, but not the poor. Increasing the number in poverty works against the interests of the middle class and is perceived to increase the power of capitalism. But poverty has its advantages. Should more of the middle class be forced into poverty, eventually the communities in poverty can remain relatively fixed, unlike the precarious shifting and displacing of the excluded classes that exist today. From here, shared interests as poor people can be redeveloped, but until something like this happens, the poor may be left to their own devices, destroyed by civilization, unnecessary for resistance and unnecessary to middle class democracy.

This changes little of the function and intention of practicing democracy, which has always relied on an exploited class to maintain the privileges thought to create equality. Athenian democracy was thought to be positive and their slavery was just part of the culture of the times, but little has changed in both the rhetoric of democracy and the practice it claims.

The poor aren't enemies of direct decision-making. If anything, hierarchy has proven that anything other than direct decision making separates the hierarch from the poor, creating different interests and intent. If middle class democracy is to be overcome, it will be overcome by those excluded from its decisions. The poor and exploited have to create their own structures that directly interest their participation. If the middle class want to build an inclusive democracy that destroys authority and class society, they'll have to give solidarity despite the reactions of the state and capitalism. The exploited can't share decision-making with the middle class without first creating their own method of struggle. Those poor that do may lose interest in being poor and instead rise up...to the middle. When the poor organize as the poor, their interests are expressed not in how they want society to be ran, but in how they want to take care of each other while they attack the social order.

A long time ago the communists recognized the need for workers and peasants to ally. They created the hammer to represent the workers and the sickle to represent the peasants. This unification was initially rejected by Marx because capitalism was supposed to eliminate the peasant and transform them into workers. Instead the attitudes of the peasant and the slave have been carried into capitalism. While the symbols of communism have become another recuperated symbol of false opposition, the poor continue to be excluded and exploited despite civilization's "progress".

The poor shouldn't be eliminated or alleviated, but embraced. While the middle class continues its lifestyle of work and accumulation, its sustainability has been questioned and found wanting. The poor are still loyal to fulfilling the necessities of life but have little reason to defend work or the accumulation associated with it. Our society of the future is one without hierarchy or control. Our liberation is being released from being responsible for civilization as civilization has always been controlled by those that also control us. We live with its poisons, in its prisons. We fight in its streets and on its battlefields. We don't want a society of controllers anymore! For a poor society, for the end of civilization!

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