Mindful Economics Understanding American Capitalism, Its Consequences & Alternatives By Joel C. Magnuson // 366 pp, Pilot Light, 2007
A book review by Patrice Greanville
http://i238.photobucket.com/albums/ff262/walterRehm/gekkodouglas.jpg" /> Michael Douglas as the memorable Gordon Gekko in the film Wall Street, with a character based on the real-life buccaneer conglomerateur Ivan Boesky.
"The richest one percent of this country owns half our country's wealth, five trillion dollars. One third of that comes from hard work, two thirds comes from inheritance, interest on interest accumulating to widows and idiot sons and what I do, stock and real estate speculation. It's bullshit. You got ninety percent of the American public out there with little or no net worth. I create nothing. I own."—Gordon Gekko to Bud Fox (Wall Street, 1987, directed by Oliver Stone)
This is an important book about a vast and important subject—economics—which, except for hermits and recluses living in the wilderness, affects just about everyone, every single day, in more ways than most people realize. Understanding economics—or rather, to be more precise, the political economy, a term I amplify later— is critical to any person wishing to make sense of the world, and essential to choosing rationally how to position oneself on the political map.
It's obvious that if you really understand what's going on in society, and your place in it, especially the larger issues and behaviors that define what a healthy and truly democratic society is all about, you're not likely to vote against your own interest—shoot yourself in the foot, so to speak— nor give your allegiance to criminals and scoundrels in the political class, nor act in a boorish or wantonly selfish manner injurious to the majority of your fellows. Yet that is exactly what we continue to observe among broad segments of the population of many nations, most notably the US (think of "the red state syndrome"), where such "irrational" voting patterns have become so scandalously common as to make the American electorate something of an enigma if not a laughingstock to many observers around the globe. So how do we explain this? The short answer is conditioned behavior injected from above, or "false consciousness."
Now, I'm not saying here that false political consciousness explains every single contemptible, cruel, or stupid act carried out by human beings, individually or collectively; such behavior long preceded and probably will long persist after the elimination of "class society", but it goes a long way to explain the curious and persistent disarray found across the board in most deeply class- divided nations today (Disraeli himself called Britain a kingdom split into two irreconcilable nations, "the nation of the rich and the nation of the poor..."). What's more, modernity and technological sophistication have done little to keep this phenomenon of massive malignant disorientation from spreading; if anything, they seem to have aggravated it. For since at least the late 19th century, shadowing the emergence of the "mass man" as an important player in history, there's been an enormous expansion of the tools and wiles of social propaganda for the purpose of political manipulation by various institutions and elites, a fact facilitated by the concurrent rise of mass media. Meanwhile, the object of all propaganda since its inception in the papal chambers of the 17th century—whether commercial or political—has remained the same, to generate and buttress false consciousness for the almost exclusive benefit of the propagandizing agents—in the vast majority of cases, the traditional upper classes.
So where does this "false consciousness" come from, how does it benefit the ruling classes, and how does the discipline of economics fit into all this?
Fountainheads, uses, and effects of false political consciousness
Before we examine directly the question of economics from both mainstream ("neoclassical") and unorthodox perspectives, the latter the subject of Joel Magnuson's compelling volume Mindful Economics, we might profit from taking a short detour into the larger historical picture defining false consciousness in our age, if for no other reason than to better visualize the significance of having the social sciences, and economics, in particular, contributing powerfully to the misleading brew we suffer from. For it bears saying upfront: Mainstream economics in its present (bourgeois) form is a huge fount of authoritative disinformation about the real world, whose cascading toxic effects can be located in practically all corners of society where the public is herded for answers.
Manipulation an old story
The rise of modern propaganda as a tool of governance was largely inevitable, hardwired almost in the evolution of our species through the various highly imperfect stages of its grand journey (which still continues), from primitive, unconscious communism to scientific, deliberate communalism.
Since the arrival of class-divided society on the stage of history thousands of years ago, chiefly as a result of agriculture, sedentarism, etc., the puny privileged minorities at the top have relied on some form of false consciousness or ideology (backed up by liberal applications of violence when circumstances dictated it) to keep the disorganized majorities pliant, divided, and in check. Religion and the monopoly of violence by the upper classes and their henchmen—and later the modern nation state—served this purpose admirably for many centuries, but with the emergence of the newfangled democratic ideas in the wake of the French revolution—and associated notions of egalitarianism, secularism, and broad enfranchisement introduced by the ascendant European middle class (the bourgeois) in their effort to attract as many supporters as they could in the struggle against the decrepit feudal order—more refined and updated methods of social control became necessary. The rapid strides made by science and technology over the last 150 years helped immensely in this regard, so it didn't take too long for new modalities of control to develop. It's noteworthy, nonetheless, that modern propaganda embedded in myriad platforms, from radio and television to mass circulation newspapers, etc., did not retire its ancient counterpart; nor has it completely done away with the necessity of state violence against determined dissidents. It has simply added another monumental weapon to the arsenal of the upper classes—in today's world, mostly the corporate bourgeoisie—to shape the fate of nations according to their whim.
http://i238.photobucket.com/albums/ff262/walterRehm/AdamSmith.jpg" /> Adam Smith: Often invoked, rarely read.
False political consciousness has always worked to prop up the status quo. In the 14th century, for example, embedded in fanatical religiosity and ignorance, it justified feudalism. In our time, it props up capitalism and its offshoot, imperialism. As such, it presents all true democrats (small "d") with a tough challenge: Systemic propaganda in pursuit of false consciousness is not just annoying; it's lethal to the survival of democracy, and its advance inevitably eviscerates every single feature of democracy that make its functioning a reality worth fighting for.
It's fairly obvious that from the ruling orders' perspective the wages of propaganda are substantial. False consciousness among the masses allows the upper classes to run society in their own narrow self-interest while pretending to do so in the interest of all, as true democracy would require. Enormous, mind-boggling wealth and power are thus rapidly accumulated by the tip of the social pyramid in all societies riddled with inequality. In America, an empire on the move for at least a century now, and one of the most income-polarized nations in the developed world, the ideological stranglehold has allowed the US ruling class not only to make a mess of domestic policy, but the freedom to engage with relative impunity in constant and murderous meddling in the affairs of other nations, as the case of Vietnam a generation ago, and Iraq today, so eloquently confirm. And while at the "micro level" commercial propaganda (i.e., advertising) may induce us only to switch from one brand of detergent to another, a fairly innocuous act, at the "macro level" of class or systemic propaganda the effects are far more ominous, since the latter seeks to influence not only the direction but the very nature of the society we inhabit.
"We make the rules, pal. The news, war, peace, famine, upheaval, the price of a paper clip. We pick that rabbit out of a hat while everybody sits around wondering how the hell we did it. Now you’re not naïve enough to think that we’re living in a democracy, are you, Buddy? It’s the free market, and you’re part of it."—Gordon Gekko, Wall Street (directed by Oliver Stone) _______________
As might be expected, the instruments to mould opinion are jealously guarded by the ruling classes everywhere; in capitalist America, among other things, literally priced out of the reach of most common mortals. This is logical and consistent with the wealth and power distribution of such societies, where the savvier sectors of the plutocracy understand that the monopoly of opinion manipulation is vital to the survival of the system. Outright repression can certainly ensure a level of compliance, sometimes for a generation or two, but in the long run intimidation cannot guarantee political stability or legitimacy. Only covert mind control can deliver that. Thus by far the most efficient solution is when we are made to carry the chains and prisons right inside our heads. Policing our own actions while still believing in our total freedom is simply a diabolically effective formula ensuring perpetual bondage, but to make it fly, the system requires the confluence of many delicate factors, including the complicity of academia.
Media critic and former economist P.H. Greanville is Cyrano's Journal Online's founding editor. He has a lifetime interest in the defense of animals-helpless victims of human dominionism-and tries to keep his sense of humor about life's curveballs, especially those thrown by women.
It's rather unfortunate that so many words were used to describe capitalism, when they were REALLY describing imperialism. We have not had honest capitalism since 1600, in no place in the world. The US was close to it for a while, but it was steadily eroded. The U.S. could have never grown otherwise.
Most educators in economics are only there because they parrot what they are PAID to parrot. They don't sell out, because they had the wrong ideas from the beginning. If they were not wrong, they would not have been hired to teach. They would not have even made it through college.
But rewarding the wrong-headed, and denying the correct, worked like a charm, in all areas of government, education and religion. Lying by omission was utilized to cause most people to give up their natural-born self-defense of mind, body and soul. Economics is simply all about promises, that's the essence.It is promises that men live by. As you can plainly see in today's real estate market, keeping promises is not going so well.
Socialism produces the same results as imperialism. One's through the front door, the other is through the back door. Slavery results from of both. Honest capitalism is about keeping the promises you make, and not making promises you can't keep. Honest capitalism does not reward people who lie, steal or murder. Both parties profit from honest capitalism. Socialism, fascism and imperialism are simply they win, you lose. If you care, there's much more at
according to the lead-in here, is said to be "false consciousness." This is tantalizing and fascinating, and in fact caused me read the article, given that I'm something of a capitalist pig at heart (how can one grow up in America and not be otherwise?), and have had a long standing interest in consciousness (how can you be conscious and not be otherwise?).
Yet I couldn't find a definition of this main prop of capitalism in the entire four pages, and I have to say this was somewhat disappointing--particularly since each paragraph sounds like it will lead to something important.
I am well aware that the whole show is bogus, that Adam Smith's words are universally taken out of context, that we need a sustainable economy, that Milton Freidman was a scumbag, that Samuelson is a schill who can't or won't explain the inner workings of the system, that the GPD is an absurd measure of how well we're doing, and so on.
But I still don't know what "false consciousness" is... Perhaps you could try again with a comment here?
by
Daniel Geery (26 articles, 58 quicklinks, 121 diaries, 690 comments)
on Tuesday, December 25, 2007 at 8:00:02 PM
Let me offer you a definition that now appears on the WIKI
and to which I contributed a bit:
FALSE CONSCIOUSNESS is the Marxistthesis that material and institutional processes in capitalist society are misleading to the proletariat [i.e., anyone who MUST WORK for a living], and to other classes. These processes obfuscate the true relations of forces between various classes, and the real state of affairs regarding the development of pre-socialist society (relative to the secular development of human society in general).
This is essentially a result of ideological control which the proletariat either do not know they are under or disregard with a view to their own POUM (probability/possibility of upward mobility)[1]. POUM or something like it is required in economics with its presumption of rational agency; otherwise wage laborers would be the conscious supporters of social relations antithetical to their own interests, violating that presumption.
The concept flows from the theory of commodity fetishism — that people experience social relationships as value relations between things, e.g., between the cash in their wage packet and the shirts they want. The cash and the shirt appear to conduct social relations independently of the humans involved, determining who gets what by their inherent values. This leaves the person who earned the cash and the people who made the shirt ignorant of and alienated from their social relationship with each other. So the individual "resolves" the experiences of alienation and oppression through a false understanding of the natural need to compete with others for limited goods.
I left this out of the article because I thought false consciousness was clear enough in terms of the multiple examples I put forth, including the fact that mainstream, bourgeois economics, was a prime fount and validator for these mystifications.
In Marx's view—which I concur with—consciousness was always political, for it was always the outcome of politic-economic circumstances. What one thinks of life, power, and self, for Marx, is always a product of ideological forces.
For Marx, ideologies appear to explain and justify the current distribution of wealth and power in a society. In societies with unequal allocations of wealth and power, ideologies present these inequalities as acceptable, virtuous, inevitable, and so forth. Ideologies thus tend to lead people to accept the status quo. The subordinate people come to believe in their subordination: the peasants to accept the rule of the aristocracy, the factory workers to accept the rule of the owners, consumers the rule of corporations. This belief in ones own subordination, which comes about through ideology, is, for Marx, false consciousness.
That is, conditions of inequality create ideologies which confuse people about their true aspirations, loyalties, and purposes.[2] Thus, for example, the working class has often been, for Marx, beguiled by nationalism, organized religion, and other distractions. These ideological devices help to keep people from realizing that it is they who produce wealth, they who deserve the fruits of the land, all who can prosper: instead of literally thinking for themselves, they think the thoughts given to them by the ruling class.
I hope this clarifies the matter sufficiently. By the way, you're too educated and too smart to be a complete vassal of the "prevailing ideology". You have clearly seen its glaring limitations. Even so, you may still believe that for humanity there is no better road than more and better capitalism forever, and in that you'd be wrong, and still reflecting the emotional content of "false consciousness." This statement would be true with one exception, and that would be for you to be a member of the ruling class, in which case the falsehoods would have no real downside. —P. Greanville
by
Hernan Greanville (1 articles, 0 quicklinks, 1 diaries, 1 comments)
on Tuesday, December 25, 2007 at 8:30:20 PM
Nice review, well written. Sounds like an interesting and much needed book - thanks for the heads up. Another book you might find interesting is They're Building a Box - and You're In It - http://www.rudemacedon.ca/dlp/box/box-intro.html - covers some of the same things economically speaking, but in a more 'layman's' oriented way of talking about them - and a number of less directly economically topics, although in modern society most things are fairly directly tied to the imperatives of capitalism.
by
siamdave (4 articles, 0 quicklinks, 1 diaries, 70 comments)
on Wednesday, December 26, 2007 at 8:13:13 AM
4 comments
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