Without a Massive Wealth Gap, There is no Rise of Joker

This Article Contains Spoilers

photo by BROTE STUDIO

After being kicked around by youth, losing his job, losing his healthcare and access to the medication that helped treat his mental illness, and now, being bullied by three wealthy suit-wearing men on the subway, Arthur Fleck snapped. Fleck, wearing full clown-make up, pulled out his gun, pointed it at the three men attacking him, and shot them. One of the three, having had survived his bullets, tried to run away; Fleck chased him down and shot him in cold blood on the subway stairs. The newspapers reported these deaths as the acts of a man angry and jealous of their wealthy status. Gotham’s wealthy elite lambasted the clown as a madman. Much of the city, however, glorified the murderous clown and championed him as a “man of the people.” Why?

Economic inequality was driving the city apart. The city had divided along these two lines: the super-wealthy and everyone else — bourgeoisie and proletariat. When Fleck, aka the Joker, shot these men, he inadvertently released a tension that had been building up in Gotham for some time. He became a working-class hero, despite having no intention to, by murdering members of what the public perceived to be “the elite” bourgeoisie. Further, Gotham was allowed to become this unequal because elites co-opted the city’s government and rigged things in their favor while at the same time cut programs and services intended to help the poor.

It was these conditions of inequality that allowed the Joker to rise. It was the public’s disgruntlement at Gotham’s leadership and lopsided capitalism that laid down the framework for disarray. That is, Gotham, by the end of this film, was being torn apart due to class warfare that the government failed to prevent. It was capitalism’s natural tendency to divide its citizens into these opposing classes — to generate widening inequalities — that created the tension which eventually burst open and elevated Joker as the leader of their cause. In reality, the Joker wanted nothing more than to achieve significance — after having lived the life of an invisible and mentally ill man — through nihilist destruction which the disgruntled proletariat confused for a class conscious rebellion.

As people like Andrew Yang have pointed out, capitalism has a tendency for this sort of class warfare. It has been evident throughout US history and is always in danger of resurfacing. It’s the government’s role, by rolling out safety nets like Universal Basic Income and regulating markets, to prevent this from happening. And, the division between economy and politics is, in reality, non-existent; they don’t exist in separate realms. In fact, the economy and the government are inseparable. The government sets the rules. And, depending on who controls the government, it can rig the rules in favor of the elite, or try and keep the game “fair” so that all can have an opportunity to gain in the market. Most importantly, the government has the role of keeping capitalist society from destroying itself due to class warfare.

This is, in a nutshell, a Marxist critique of capitalism: that it produces massive inequality and that massive inequality is destabilizing for society. But, are we doomed to follow down the same path that Gotham went down? Is there any way to prevent chaos and class warfare that broke out at the end of the film? Is capitalism necessarily bad and to be replaced?