Introduction
It is said that the automobile industry created and brought life to the cities, but once again official history dangerously misrepresents and distorts the facts. In reality, it is responsible for the destruction of viable human communities and emblematic of death culture all over the world. The auto industry’s monopolistic power kept Detroit and the rest of the world from creating alternative urban environments and consciously built car cities and a car world, chopped up and destroyed by incredible expressway systems—cities and a world for cars, not for people.
The automobile is a murderous weapon, responsible for 40,300 to 50,000 deaths and one and-a-half to two million disabling injuries yearly in the U.S. alone. Between 1913 and 1985, 2,530,119 people were killed in the U.S. in traffic accidents. Countless others were killed and injured on the job, in the production of the automobile. These figures have been on the rise all over the “civilized” world for the past five years. They are called “accidents” and yet they are assumed, calculated, expected—acceptable losses that go with the territory. Sterile, cold statistics somehow blur the bitter reality of this horrifying yet preordained massive slaughter.
The automobile is the embodiment of a culture of waste—the waste of human lives, of natural resources, the waste of people’s time and energies. A blatant example of material waste is the phenomenon of the abandoned car: 7 million cars are junked each year in the U.S. The automobile lays waste to the landscape with its unending network of roads and freeways. It lays waste to the environment, creating acid rains that critically threaten the ecosystem, polluting the city air and thus perilously increasing the incidence of respiratory diseases. In its production, each automobile creates 50 barrels of toxic waste.
And we waste our days on this commodity that wastes us. Think of the time spent shopping for and purchasing a car, buying car insurance, getting licenses, driving permits; the time spent in maintenance and repair; the time spent waiting in your car in traffic jams, on the road, waiting at lights, in gas stations, in auto supply stores, in traffic court; the time spent looking for parking spaces and running nervously back and forth to parking meters; and worst of all, think of all the time spent at work making money to pay for it all. The car is clearly the focal commodity of capitalism. It purports to free us, but it binds us tightly in to a maniacal mechanical circle that parcels out our time in a frenetic stop and go.
City dwellers grow up listening to the constant roar of freeway traffic, engine noises, squealing brakes, and horns outside their windows. Most seem unaware when the urban disquiet breaks the “acceptable” decibel levels. Most seem not to notice when yet another “necessary” invention, like the car alarm, fills the day and night with countless frantic interruptions. Perhaps they adapt somewhat to the noise. Perhaps they grow quietly insane.
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History Repeats Itself: First as Farce, Then as Tragedy
From the CrimethInc. collective (06/11/2024).
Why the Democrats Are Responsible for Donald Trump’s Return to Power
Donald Trump has won the 2024 presidential election. That means that we will have to fight many of the battles of 2017-2020 all over again. But first, in order to understand the scale of what we’re up against, let’s look at how we got here.
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