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The cultural monopoly of the neo-liberal ruling class
Tweet about this on TwitterShare on FacebookEmail this to someone By Jorge Molina Araneda: “By virtue of the ideology of the cultural industry, conformity replaces autonomy and conscience; The order that arises from this is never confronted with what it claims to be, or with the real interests of men ”.
The Culture Industry, Theodor Adorno and Max Horkheimer
At this moment, when the prevailing socioeconomic system at the global level is irremediably and unquestionably exhausted, the political world seems to lack an ideological option that offers a viable alternative to replace it. The governments of the countries that by reason or by force offered the world the ideas that for 500 years guided socio-political and economic development, are questioned by their own population.
In the complex society of the 20th century, access to the mass media became almost the only option to be able to effectively exercise freedom of expression. But either due to legal or economic barriers to access such media or due to the simple competition in the use of spaces and times of printing or transmission, the diversity of opinions and visions that perhaps would have prevented society from accepting was limited. as a dogma of faith the single thought that today is in crisis. The limited right to information served for the imposition of ideas that, impregnated to the core in today's humanity, prevent the majority from seeing the deep contradictions of the prevailing system and, for the same reason, they avoided, until the emergence of the Internet, the dissemination of new ideas.
The vast majority still have a hard time perceiving something other than the idea that we are facing a crisis of unusual scope. What is read on the banners of the indignant, what the mobilized identifying themselves as the 99 percent shout, what more and more blogs and messages on the net claim is that it is not a crisis, but a hoax. The prevailing socioeconomic system has not been built for the development and freedom of humanity, it is a mechanism articulated from the top of an all-embracing power to extract all the world's wealth through the financial-monetary complex. If it sees its domain limited, either by the excesses caused by its own voracity or by fortuitous events, it reacts by sucking up all the resources of society. It is this global financial complex that causes inflation, which, like interest, constitutes the intrinsic mechanism for the transfer of wealth. When the financial complex loses, it snatches through governments the resources to be rescued. This is the enslaving mechanism of capitalism; the system that is falsely promoted as a synonym for freedom.
With the deceptive hymn to individual freedom, a system has been imposed whose prevalence depends on the existence of scarcity. When there is a shortage, human beings always assume behaviors of struggle, competition -even if this means cheating or stealing- to obtain the capital that, through its accumulation, increases the capacity of those who possess it to generate even more scarcity.
Bypassing governments and their opponents - all of them conveniently accommodated in political parties - public affairs have been circumscribed around a single issue: capital. The wealth of nations is no longer measured except in terms of capital. The ideological struggle, therefore, focuses on how and how much attention has to be paid to capital. Some, exalting its virtues when a few possess it and, at the other extreme, those who advocate the collective dominance of the majority to possess it. Under this premise that everything is capital, all other aspects of the economy and life in society are diluted: dignity, work, natural sources of resources - water, land, air, light. Born under the shelter of liberalism, there are still those who in this mess of inconsistencies affirm that capitalism equates to free markets and protection of private property. Neither one nor the other exist when the whole system privileges a few by exalting individualism that causes scarcity and, with it, the accumulation of capital. What, then, is the ideological option that can get the world out of these contradictions?
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Dany-Robert Dufour, French philosopher, researcher of liberalism and its consequences when it turns into savage capitalism, has affirmed that it is embodied as a new totalitarianism. The term pleonexÃa says, is in Plato's Republic and means "always have more." The Polis, was built on the prohibition of pleonexÃa. It can be said then that, until the 18th century, an entire part of the West functioned on the basis of this prohibition. From the creation of the monetary financial complex, world greed was released, the greed of the markets, the greed of the bankers. An avidity about which Alan Greenspan himself (former president of the Federal Reserve of the United States) before the North American Commission, after the crisis of 2008, said: “He thought that the avidity of the bankers was the best possible regulation. I realize that that doesn't work anymore and I don't know why ”. Greenspan confessed in this way that what guides things is the liberation of pleonexÃa, but being an individual created and cultivated by the system itself, it is not possible for him to see beyond.
Faced with the urgent need to find new ideological spheres, new proposals from parties and candidates that they will receive from the hands of their predecessors, entire countries, shattered societies and economies, it is not possible to start from what is known. What we know has been gestated in the logic of pleonexia that dominates everything. It is necessary not to fall into the temptation of wanting to fix the world - the country - from the perspective of our own structures, with which we easily repeat again the urgency of organizing, instituting, legalizing, as if in those acts we were conjuring up what already we do not want and we end up betting again on the repetition and the restoration of what we tried to change.
For many political scientists, communism was a retaining wall against capitalism, a kind of constant threat that forced capitalist states to seek the social welfare of the working masses to try to avoid potential strikes and uprisings; with this the idea of the Welfare State gained more force.
Currently capitalism, in its most radical version called neoliberalism, is hegemonic in most of the world and, like all monopoly power, runs the risk of suffering constant and severe uncontrols.
The imperialism of instrumental reason, of calculating and pragmatic thinking, has weakened critical-reflective thinking.
The unique thought is the neoliberal version of the market economy that implants the economic reason of the benefit on the ethical and political motivations; in addition, it exalts the excellence of the market and of capital, which is where the other aspects of individual and social life are subordinated.
Some philosophers link the unique thought with the postmodern attitude, that is to say, the thought against the current is incapable of wielding values and substantive reasons capable of facing the reasons of the neoliberal market.
Then, unique thinking is defined by the following characteristics:
–Primacy of economic power: decision-making is attributed to the economy and it is considered that the interests of all economic forces would constitute the real interests of the global community. Politics is linked to the power of the media and these, in turn, are frequently subordinated to world economic-financial power. Transnational corporations and financial institutions are very powerful and adopt as an ideal pseudo formal democratic procedures that have absolutely no real meaning. Amen, citizens, in general terms, do not interfere in "public affairs" and ignore the guidelines that shape their life. However, if at some point, however utopian it may seem, economic power were to be returned to its role of subordination to social interests, there could be some possibility of achieving a free and democratic society.
- Ecological indifference: the only western thought conceives the human being as uprooted from nature, therefore, it is observed with a predatory eagerness. The hard-line capitalist economy does not assess or reduce the environmental costs of the wild and malicious exploitative interaction of man with nature.
–Economic inequality: the only capitalist thought is indifferent towards the negative and destabilizing consequences that it generates in the social sphere, that is, the rich get richer, and the poor get poorer. Ergo, that gap causes serious social segmentation and polarization.
Unique thinking is connected with the so-called instrumental reason, discovered by the theorists of the Frankfurt School, according to which, and following Horkheimer, it consists of a small sphere of human rationality that has helped to turn people into masters and lords of nature, it fills them with innumerable material means but, at the same time, dehumanizes and dominates them. The imperialism of instrumental reason, of calculating and pragmatic thinking, has weakened critical-reflective thinking, the one that guides us and leads us to establish our personal identity rooted in nature and with a full sense of social solidarity.
Horkheimer and Adorno criticized the society of their time, pointing out that instrumental reason set in motion the cultural industry, which imposes its alienating models through the media.
The cultural industry and its media are made up of: the internet, cinema, radio, television, magazines, music, advertising and all other leisure activities. Thanks to these means, the great magnates of the world economy gently impose a cultural monopoly - hegemony would call it Gramsci - that marginalizes any creation that seeks to emancipate the individual and stimulate creativity not controlled by them. The products of this industry are designed so that the viewer does not have time to think, since what is seen, heard or read already offers the panacea to any question posed by a mind numbed by media pyrotechnics. The cultural industry implants values, behaviors, needs and uniform and uncritical languages for all.
The only possible solution is to have, at some point, a highly politicized and questioning population of the current world system, only in this way will gradually the chains of the hegemonic tyranny of the single thought be broken. Let us remember that Rousseau himself warned us centuries ago in his Social Contract that the human being is born free but is chained everywhere.
In The Guardians of Liberty, Noam Chomsky and Edward S. Herman unveiled the operational use of the mechanisms of a whole propaganda model at the service of the national interest - of the United States - and imperial domination. They examined the structure of the media (the wealth of the owner) and how it relates to other systems of power and authority. For example, the government (which gives them advertising, main source of income), business corporations, universities, etc.
For Chomsky, the task of private media that serve the interests of their owners is to create a passive and obedient public, not a participant in decision-making. It is about creating an atomized and isolated community, so that it cannot organize itself and exercise its potential to become a powerful and independent force that can blow up the whole shed of the concentration of power. Only, for the mechanism to work, the domestication of the media is also necessary; their indoctrination. That is, generate a herd mentality. Make journalists and columnists flee from all ethical imperatives and fall into the networks of propaganda or double thinking. That is, they create their own story and justify it by complacency, pure pragmatism, exacerbated individualism or nihilistic gloating. And that, disciplined, shielded by "reason of state" or "patriotic duty", they assume - for class interests or to preserve their job stability - the ideology of reactionary patriotism and conservatism. Ultimately, the fear of expressing disagreement ends up turning prudence into assimilation, submission and cowardice. The goal of the socio-economic-cultural model is: one should think in only one direction, that presented by the capitalist system of domination. And if to guarantee consent it is necessary to apply the tools of psychological warfare for the control of the masses; such as: inciting fear, electoral terror campaigns, promoting submission and generating a paralyzing panic, the vigilantes of the system come into operation under the umbrella of political correctness, protected by a whole system of gifts and prizes that provide a little of comfort and accommodative power.
The cultural monopoly that resulted from the policies of a neoliberal democracy is nothing more than a reincarnation of the fascist cultural monopoly, strengthened through social logics that found a way to veil the ideological weaknesses that prevented the complete domination of the cultural monopolies that operated as part of those fascism. Horkheimer and Adorno were careful to remember that the judgment of the intellectual elite of their time, who portrayed the culture industry as American barbarism resulting from the cultural backwardness of American consciousness, was an illusion. 'Rather, it was pre-fascist Europe that had lagged behind the trend towards cultural monopoly. But precisely thanks to this backwardness the spirit retained a remnant of autonomy. " If at the beginning of the last century the avant-gardes hindered the trend towards the consolidation of the monopoly, towards the end of the Second World War Horkheimer and Adorno perceived that battle as lost. However, the ideological duopoly that shaped the postwar world order also proved to be a strong resistance to the advance of cultural monopoly. It was not until the fall of the Wall that one way of being was declared victorious over the other, to establish itself as unique and thereby allow the process of consolidation of the monopoly.
Among the countless factors that made it possible to start the advance of a cultural monopoly again we find: modern democracy in 1989, and neoliberalism as the ideology of said democracy. There is a symbiotic relationship between these events, that is, the reality of modern democracy, completely removed from both its ancient and enlightened conceptualization, does not refer to a form of government, but to the supplement that legitimizes contemporary oligarchic states (all states). Contemporary states that call themselves democratic). The rhetoric that is constructed to explain the reason for a victory of the West over the socialist bloc (and not vice versa) rested resoundingly on the practical, very specific deployment of the concept of "absolute freedom", where the triumph of democracies Regarding totalitarianism, it was not the consequence of a State that ensured the freedom of the individual as freedom to participate in public affairs, but of a State that guaranteed freedom as individual freedom, which in practice translated into the right of the individual to be free from any State intervention. If capitalism is the economic logic of a modern democracy, neoliberalism finds, in the concept of individual freedom that these democracies manage, correlation and support of the non-interventionist logic that underpins it. A freedom defined by Karl Polanyi as' freedom to exploit equals; to make inordinate profits without rendering commensurable service to the community; freedom to prevent technological innovations from being used for a public purpose, or freedom to profit from public calamities secretly plotted to obtain private advantage '.
The process by which neoliberalism - hand in hand with the concept of democracy and freedom - becomes the monopoly ideology of the 1980s and 1990s is nothing more than what David Harvey, relying on Gramsci, calls a construction of consent. In other words, the elaboration of a "common sense" understood as a "sense possessed in common" that arises from a majority consensus; in this case, a consensus on the validity of individual absolute freedom, built by necessity on a debasement of the notion of "the common."
Harvey emphasizes that common sense, which gave legitimacy to the implementation of neoliberal policies, should in no way be understood as "good judgment", the construction of which is achieved "from critical involvement with current issues". On the contrary, beliefs and fears may play a part in the constitution of common sense, as well as cultural and traditional prejudices and values, which "can be mobilized to mask other realities".
In our country the mental and cultural mantra, which has suffered some cracks during the last fifteen years, dictates the following:
-The human being seeks his personal well-being, is essentially rational and individualistic and responds to material stimuli, especially economic ones.
-Social welfare is the sum of individual welfare, provided that the rights of others are not impaired. Competition increases personal well-being and, therefore, social well-being; therefore, it is an essential element for progress.
-Markets operate efficiently and quickly, if they are not hindered and achieve an optimal allocation of current and future resources; you have to let them act freely. Even natural monopolies should not be intervened, as excessive profits attract other entrepreneurs to act. If there are externalities, they are resolved by individual negotiations, without the intervention of the authority.
-The markets for productive factors must act with the minimum of state obstacles. The mobility of workers between companies makes the existence of unions unnecessary due to their monopoly power. Nor should there be interference in financial markets. There must be openness to the outside both in the trade of goods and services and in capital. Price freedom is the central mechanism for allocating resources.
-Entrepreneurs are key actors in society, as they determine initiatives and entrepreneurship, encouraged by profits. In addition, they generate the savings that enable economic growth and progress. Therefore, they must work in full freedom, guaranteeing property rights. Social benefits such as education, health, housing and pensions can be provided by private individuals acting as companies, although they are financed by the State.
-The functions of the State in a society with efficient markets and without externalities are reduced to specific aspects: the traditional tasks of liberalism, such as national defense, foreign relations and the administration of justice. Furthermore, by its nature, the State is considered to be inefficient, since unlike the private entrepreneur it does not maximize profits.
These are the central elements of the neoliberal ideology that unfortunately worldwide became dogmas as a result of acriticity and, ultimately, if the year 2019 does not mediate for our country, they would continue to be an unquestionable creed even for the most dispossessed who take as normal the subjugation they suffer from the most powerful.
Rebelión has published this article with the author's permission under a Creative Commons license, respecting his freedom to publish it in other sources.
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