Interesting foray into the class structure of quaker-originated org, Movement for a New Society (MNS) in part two of Smith's essay. In particular a working class member's critique of the org has several pertinent observations which modern-day environmentalists and leftists could learn from. Howard Ryan's essay was 'The Nonviolent Movement and The Working Class and A Critique of Movement For a New Society', excerpted here by Smith:

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[Howard] Ryan concludes with this: “Any discussion of the working class experience is incomplete if it fails to consider internalized oppression: the guilt and self-hate which are encouraged by society and which permeate our thoughts.” He offers this moving hypothetical to illustrate the average working man’s situation. As it remains so strikingly relevant to our modern political situation, and as it did not get published back in 1980, it deserves quotation at length.

“By the time he’s old enough to walk,” Ryan writes, “little Johnny gets into mischief—he’s a bad and naughty boy. A few years later Johnny’s friends notice that he doesn’t like rough games or fighting—bad little Johnny’s also a sissy. In school Johnny gets restless and can’t pay attention, and so falls behind—bad little Johnny the sissy gets labeled a ‘slow learner.’ On through his teens the bad messages continue to get compiled in Johnny’s head—Johnny’s fat, Johnny’s got pimples, Johnny jacks off, Johnny can’t get girls, Johnny’s a faggot. Later, he’s married, with kids, a blue collar job—Johnny’s a nobody, his family lives in a crummy apartment, his wife has to get a job to make ends meet, Johnny’s not a good provider. Johnny’s not a real man. Being of American working class stock, Johnny has bought into the myth that it’s his fault that he’s poor. It’s his fault that his family doesn’t have a nice home in the suburbs. By American standards, Johnny is a failure…. If he had only tried harder in school, he might have gotten a scholarship and went to college. If only he wasn’t so dumb, or so lazy, if he hadn’t fooled around so much, etc.

“Johnny’s quite a failure, all right. But there is one thing that he can do, and he can do it better than anyone else he knows (with the possible exception of his wife, who feels just as guilty as he does). Johnny can sacrifice. He sacrifices so much; puts in all the overtime he can. He works 55, sometimes 60 hours a week. Johnny’s dream is to save up enough to make a down payment on one of the new tract homes. His wife would love it. But every time he manages to get a little ahead, something always seems to come up. One of the kids breaks an arm or needs braces; his mother gets sick and needs help; the car needs an overhaul; he gets into an accident and his insurance won’t cover it; a temporary layoff at work; the union goes on strike; on and on. Still, he continues to plug away…. Johnny’s life may not be the grandest. Most of it’s spent busting ass on the job…. He may not be the greatest success, but Johnny’s determined to prove to himself and to the world that he can do something good in his life, something important. He’ll work and work, and save and save; and if he’s very lucky maybe he’ll get his family one or two of the good things in life, something they can be proud of. Maybe it’ll be a color TV; maybe a second family car. Or, maybe he’ll be among the fortunate few who lands a promotion to supervisor. Then they might talk about the possibilities of a camper, or a house, or—most importantly—the possibilities of getting his kids into college so that they’ll be educated and not have to go through the same crap that he’s been through.

“Can we expect Johnny to be open to our telling him that he shouldn’t demand higher wages? That he and his family could live comfortably on his present income—and their life would be much more fulfilling—if they turned to a simple lifestyle? That the things Johnny wants for his family and for which he slaves—the new car, the color TV, the tract home—are artificially induced needs which will bring them no happiness and which will spoil the environment, besides? My guess is that he will not be open to hearing us, but he will respond angrily and defensively, and that he will be justified in doing so. In a sense we have colluded with the capitalist by denying Johnny his humanity. The capitalist denies his humanity by refusing to allow him to be anything other than a piece of production machinery; we deny his humanity by telling him that the things that he wants are not legitimate wants.

“Before we decide unequivocally that the material things which the working class family strives for are artificially induced needs, I think we should look beyond the commodities themselves and toward the actual social functions that they serve. We might then find that capitalism has not so much created artificial needs as it has touched upon peoples real, gut-level, human needs and then developed various perverted, inefficient, ecologically unsound, and highly profitable ways of filling them.”

But, Ryan says, MNS has instead “placed themselves on a political pedestal, established an impeccably pure, revolutionary code of conduct, and announced that they will refuse to support the struggles of American workers until they begin living up to MNS’s standards of politically correct living. They have attacked workers’ values as regressive, illegitimated their needs, and offered no validation of the real concerns and truly human aspirations toward which working people strive. At the same time, they have asked of workers to sacrifice those precious material prizes which represent to the worker their sense of well-being; the sense of their human individuality which their working lives otherwise deny them.”