Capital(ist) Punishment

My maternal grandmother would often quote Karl Marx as she sipped her coffee and completed her crossword puzzle in pen. “The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles,” she would say, “…The Communist Manifesto.” Growing up, I knew my grandmother was intelligent, but it was only as I grew older, listening to every family story I could, that I began to understand her political views and the reason she was convinced that change is necessary. Although I’ve since learned that Marx wrote these words in 1848, the reality is that we still live in a society of class struggles. From Russia’s monarchy that my great-grandmother fled to the capitalistic society that is now present in America, class struggle has only become worse. Capitalism has often been described as modern and progressive, but my family’s history demonstrates otherwise. The stories of my great-grandmother, my grandmother, and even my own mother show that today’s world depends as much on the exploitation of others as did earlier social systems. Capitalism has not solved the world’s problems – it has just rearranged them.

My great great-grandparents, Tatiana and Mikhail, were socialists, intellectuals, and Jews – three qualities unwelcome in Russia during nineteenth century Tsarist rule. In St. Petersburg, where they lived, there were a small number of intellectuals and they occasionally met to discuss issues of political dissent. They were discovered by secret police officers (or jean-darmes, as my grandmother later referred to them) and banished to Siberia in lieu of an execution. My great-grandmother, Olga, was born in nineteenth century Russia when the Tsar still ruled the state. Raised with parents like Tatiana and Mikhail, she quickly learned to “fight for the people,” including her own parents. When her family went to board the train for Siberia, Mikhail, a doctor, attempted to open a window for ventilation, only to be threatened by the guard at gunpoint. Olga, then four years old, stepped in front of her father, begging, “Please don’t shoot my daddy!” subsiding the tension and ultimately saving his life. Olga also told stories of the terrible conditions in which prisoners – often stealing just to survive – lived in Siberia. She even went on a hunger strike to fight for the rights of these “common prisoners” to receive enough food to live.

Olga and her family eventually rejected the Tsarist government, leaving for America and the right to practice free speech. Arriving in this land of free speech and “Golden Opportunity”, however, she found that, as an immigrant, her teachers just told her to “shut up.” Coming to America, she discovered her rubles had no value and she was left destitute, raising her son alone. My great-grandmother, young and beautiful, turned to the only asset she possessed: her body. She first sold her hair, and later her body, becoming dependent on “gentlemen” to help her and her son survive. My great-grandmother, like many immigrants, came to America in search of a better life, but was met with a reality that was in many ways worse than the circumstances she had left behind. In a society so driven by capital gain, does it become excusable to sell anything one has (including one’s own body) to simply provide for one’s family?

My grandmother’s life was slightly easier than her mother’s, but she struggled to answer questions like these as she raised her eight daughters on nothing but the money she earned from selling clothes in the garment industry. My grandmother was a beautiful woman and a beautiful seamstress, paying close attention to every thread and stitch in every article of clothing she made, yet she never understood why someone who works so hard makes so much less money than an executive who types in an office all day. The social injustices people like my grandmother and her mother faced stem from the dehumanizing qualities of our economic system. In order for the executive to buy his expensive suit to go to his office and type his reports, the seamstress lives on (or below) minimum wage to toil in a factory with inhumane working conditions. Exploitation is as necessary for a capitalistic economy to function as it was for Tsarist Russia to thrive, and these strong, beautiful women in my family’s