In the US, I think part of the problem is the “American dream”. They think that they will be able to make billions, so we shouldn’t tax them, cause it would affect them!
It’s delusional.
I think Futurama captures the mental logic perfectly:
Fry: Yeah, that’ll show those poor!
Leela: Why are you cheering, Fry? You’re not rich!
Fry: True. But someday I might be rich, and people like me better watch their step!
Some folks just really like to believe there is an order to things, with people above them to aspire to, and people to kick down on.
I am pretty sure billionaires pay bot farms to defend them online so a lot of it is that and the rest are the maga idiots who couldnt stop supporting pedos if their life depended on it.
You can find an example of such operations here:
Last summer, after Old Joe Biden was forced out of running for reelection and Kamala Harris was anointed as the Democrat candidate for president, the far left’s propaganda arm (that is, the establishment media) made a massive push to make this failed vice president and longtime party hack seem new and appealing. A key part of this effort was a gaggle of young “influencers” who took to Instagram and TikTok with an enthusiastic pro-Harris message. It was sincere, it was spontaneous, it was exciting — or at least that’s what it seemed to be. Now (I know, knock me over with a feather) it turns out that the whole thing was faked: the entire Harris bubble was the artificial creation of a bunch of leftist billionaires.
lol leftist billionaires.
Gramsci’s theory of hegemony helps explain this. The superstructure of a given society eminates the values and ideology of the ruling class. This often creates false consciousness.
I don’t think Gramsci ever wrote about false consciousness, and what you’re describing is closer to the German Ideology than Gramsci’s theory of hegemony.
Like sorry if this is way out of whack but I think its like if someone wanted to understand Lenin’s formulation of imperialism and then I explained Chapter 15 of Capital v1. Like the theory is in there, but understanding it requires seeing how Marx’s “capital has x tendency” relates to specific, verifiable evidence.
If youre interested I will find the proper essays in Gramsci to post along side here, I just gotta dig in my book a little bit!
To be clear, the comment on false consciousness was separate to Gramsci, as an addendum to his theories of hegemony. I find both are good explanations, not that they are the same.
I see, thanks for the explanation. I hadn’t thought of the two things quite that way, that they fit together. False consciousness is the subjective manifestation hegemony’s objective condition.
Thanks
No problem! Gramsci’s a bit fresh on my mind since I read a good deal of him a few weeks ago.
We really lost a lot when the fash locked him up, thank god his notebooks got smuggled out.
Yep! It’s incredible how much he wrote under strict observation.
I think about the stuff he wrote about Italian theater every time I think about live nation and ticket master.
I think another thing I deeply appreciate about Gramsci’s writing is that given the fact that his prison notes never had to like “bend the stick” the way other leaders did. I think it gives an unusually long tail of relevance for his work, because he was working with abstractions, which reemerge over and over throughout struggle, and not messy revolutionary conditions.
But its incredibly sad what happened to him. Anyway thanks for your insight, I have an urge to help clarify these theories – it seems like 90% of the analysis of Gramsci I’ve read has come from Neolibs and reactionaries who can only comprehend his theories cynically (the other 10% coming from DSA’s very good Mountain Caucus). But imma need to sharpen my pencil a bit I guess
people defend billionaires because they’re retarded. I knew someone that was working for a solar company that made no money doing copd calls for a year that truly thought he could become a billionaire. they’re delusional, delusional, delusional.
Because Jimmy-Bob from trailer #23 in the south lot is going to be a billionaire soon.
They’re hoping to become one, someday, somehow.
The ideas of the ruling class are in every epoch the ruling ideas, i.e., the class which is the ruling material force of society, is at the same time its ruling intellectual force.
Ironically American Revolutionary Thomas Paine in his Common Sense said something that explains this quite well, “A long habit of not thinking a thing wrong, gives it a superficial appearance of being right,[…] Time makes more converts than reason.”
I gotta read some Paine, great quote. I keep having conversations about how society changes today, hopefully it isn’t just a local phenomenon
Because they are idiots.
Not really.
Westerners aren’t helpless innocents whose minds are injected with atrocity propaganda, science fiction-style; they’re generally smug bourgeois proletarians who intelligently seek out as much racist propaganda as they can get their hands on. This is because it fundamentally makes them feel better about who they are and how they live. The psychic and material costs are rationally worth the benefits. As for those anti-imperialists who don’t participate in this festival of xenophobia — and here I include myself — we have our own elitist consolation: we accept the tragedy of masses of gullible sheeple falling for cunning propaganda because having overcome it flatters our own intelligence. The more we condemn society’s stupidity, the smarter we feel in comparison.
It applies just as much to billionaires in general as it does to imperialism.
Does this mean according to theory that America is doomed at least until everything implodes to the worst possible outcomes?
Not necessarily! Here’s the final call to action from this incredible essay:
The good news is that we’re further along than we think in overturning this state of affairs. If we relinquish anarcho-liberal fantasies of utopias where we no longer work, if we instead accept that we are workers, if we are able to do so with pride, many realistic victories turn out to be very much within reach. Everywhere that workers already work hard, they simply need to socialize the fruits of their already-socialized labour. Admittedly, reorganizing production isn’t a trivial task. However, the point here is that our social mechanism already offers ample proof that our skills and abilities are in plentiful supply. We already accumulated Alexandrian libraries of scientific knowledge as well as entertainment, and the ability to produce infinitely more without any “help” from capitalists!
Capitalists don’t fear individual rebels. They shower us with such bohemian stories. They fear exactly the opposite: the proliferation of an authentic working-class consciousness that pointedly rejects their “idle rich” lifestyle as everyone’s ultimate ideal. The hatred of “herd mentality” ultimately derives from the aristocratic hatred of the collective wisdom of the underclasses, of their choosing to work together in order to defend themselves from predators that would otherwise pick them off one by one. The project of repurposing this elitist attitude towards utopian goals is a dead end.
If you want to be radical, then, begin by radically rejecting the oldest and most vicious and most widespread bit of ruling class ideology: the idea that there is no wisdom whatsoever to be found in the behaviour of the masses. Reject the idea of “brainwashing,” and insist on seeking the kernel of intelligence and truth and wisdom in everyone’s current actions, even when they seem repulsive or hopelessly short-sighted. Identify where exactly you can intervene, and with whom, in such a way that it dovetails with existing tendencies, but always with an eye to revolution and the prize of a better future. Address yourself to reality in just this way, and you might just begin to change it.
In other words, maintaining revolutionary optimism and treating people not as though we are some intelligent superiors, but instead fellow workers with aligned interests, we can genuinely enact change through organizing.
That’s good to hear. This is something I strongly believe in, but because of my recent understanding with new information upending some things, made me a little concerned.
also wouldn’t be surprised if I’m dealing with a doomed wave. No matter my opinion on doomerism, sometimes the brain and body doesn’t care.
That’s understandable! I think we all get that way from time to time. Revolutionary optimism is an important principle to adhere to, and it’s always a good idea to get organized.
💯
They’ve been conned, and it’s not their fault. It is up to the people who see things objectively to kindly guide their attention towards the class war, 's the only way to win it.
The world is a big ship and most of us are fools.
