Read Umair Haque’s How the Economy (Really) is Rigged Against You. You’ll be happy you invested the time.
We must attack and dismantle the cultural hegemony (1) that keeps us enthralled with the American/capitalist story of individualism and the rising-waters-lifts-all-boats mantra — all they really mean is that we’re alone as we flail and drown. As Michael Moore said (sarcastically, but accurately) in his bittersweet documentary, we’ve been educated to believe in Capitalism: A Love Story.
I think part of the reason we aren’t in the streets in greater numbers and with more frequency is that we’ve been trained to believe that economic and social mobility are possible within the existing system. Why not, then, work harder instead of marching? As Haque’s article emphasizes, social mobility is limited and perhaps even negative. But according to the fairy tale embedded in our conscious and subconscious minds, we’re all “temporarily embarrassed millionaires,” who will soon lustily sing on Easy Street, like Miss Hannigan and her
brother hope to do if their scam succeeds in the musical Annie. However, as a popular meme points out, our actual condition is that we’re always closer to eviction from our homes than we’ll ever be to becoming a billionaire.
We have an education and emotional attachment problem.
We need to consciously recognize a problem that we understand intuitively: capitalism and the capture of the state by financial/corporate interests are objective, systemic conditions that oppress us. We also need to show there are good alternatives, because we want to encourage hope, not despair.
We must provide pathways that enable us to move from capitalist hegemony to democratic alternatives. Education (2), building community-based alternative economic and political structures (3), organizing and non-violent mass action (4), supplemented by voting, are the pathways that we have available.
We’ve been educated to be politically passive, except for acting within the narrow confines of the solutions offered by the two party state once every four years — solutions which have little bearing on what legislation is enacted, because our current political system is responsive to wealth, not economic justice. That’s why we’re cynical about politics (which reinforces passivity): despite our excitement about candidates, much of what becomes law benefits the wealthy few, not the struggling many. This brutal fact has been repeated over many, many political cycles. Hopes and dreams have fallen before wealth like wheat falls to a harvester.
We’ve been educated to be politically passive
Americans are also politically passive because many of us are working too hard for too many hours to have the energy for politics. Oscar Wilde was correct when he quipped, “The trouble with socialism is that it takes up too many evenings.” If you’re an oligarch, that’s not a flaw, but a feature of the system: un-self-conscious exhausted workers, fearful of their ability to put food on the table, are less likely to revolt. If you’re anyone but an oligarch, it’s a disaster that condemns us, like so many hamsters, to a treadmill within a cage. It can be overcome, as the crowds both Trump and Sanders draw to their events illustrate, but it’s a challenge to combat psychological repression (cultural hegemony) combined with economic oppression.
“The trouble with socialism is that it takes up too many evenings.” Oscar Wilde
Call it two-factor oppression with feedback loops and the rise of Trump is explicable. Our task is to use the excitement generated by Sanders’ campaign for presidency for an educational project designed to weaken the cultural hegemony of capitalism in our minds and actions. Once the hegemony is weakened, revolutionary possibilities exist.
(1) This essay is based on the notion of cultural hegemony developed by Antonio Gramsci. It’s an alternative to orthodox Marxist analysis. See, for example, Hegemony and Revolution: Antonio Gramsci’s Political and Cultural Theory, by Walter L. Adamson. Cultural hegemony is summarized here.
(2) See Pedagogy of the Oppressed, by Paulo Freire and Donaldo Macedo. Levana Saxon and Virginia Vitzthum discuss the book on the Beautiful Trouble website.
(3) See Richard Wolff’s excellent book, Understanding Socialism, and especially his discussion of worker cooperatives and “hyper-local” economic — and therefore political — structures and organizations. Wolff discusses his book on Chris Hedges’ show, On Contact.
(4) See Erica Chenowith illuminates the value of nonviolent resistance in societal conflicts, Harvard Kennedy School, Summer 2019. Also, Why Civil Resistance Works: The Strategic Logic of Nonviolent Conflict, by Erica Chenoweth and Maria Stephan. For varieties of nonviolent resistance, see 198 Methods of Nonviolent Action, by Gene Sharp.
