Class Action

by William Corlett

Published 1 November 1998
This text attempts to contest capitalist economics and strengthen workers' organizations while respecting the importance of all members of society. It reveals the numbers of human lives marked for extinction by capitalist ideology and often erased by traditional Marxism. The author explores the plight of homeless and jobless people as an extreme case of how Americans' sense of self-worth has become entangled with the circulation of money and commodities. Within a theoretical framework that draws from the works of Jacques Lacan, Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari, and Jacques Derrida, Corlett reinterprets some of Marx's best-known texts and moves toward a plan for direct action. Relocating union organizing and anti-capitalist struggle to the least-valued sites in communities can, Corlett argues, encourage people to share resources in mutual support and defence while practicing irredentist manoeuvres in the name of a Labour underground.