28/12/2024
Michael Parenti on hegemony, monopoly capitalism and culture, 1985
It is amazing how completely the analysis stands up.
"Let me sum up some of things said so far. What we face is not only a capitalist economic system but an entire capitalist social and cultural order. Capitalists exercise cultural hegemony by direct ownership of the means of mental production and production of services, by occupying positions of institutional command as trustees and directors, as patrons and contributors, and by procuring public funds to subsidize private institutions. While their cultural hegemony bolsters their state power, they also use their state power to finance and expand their cultural hegemony. This cultural dominance serves several valuable functions:
• First, as with the media, entertainment and health industries, cultural institutions are a major source of capital accumulation. Capitalists are involved in them because they make money from them.
• Second, capitalists support and direct institutions such as universities, professional schools and research centers because they provide the kind of specialized services and trained personnel that business does not want to pay for itself . When capitalists realized they needed literate, punctual and compliant machinists, they then favored public schools. When they needed lawyers, engineers and managers, they approved of professional and technical schools. The substantial public funds used to sustain these institutions represent an indirect subsidy to the capital accumulation process.
• Third, most important of all, these institutions are crucial instruments of ideological and class control, socializing people into attitudes and dedications that are functional to, and supportive of, the existing system, while suppressing information and perspectives that are not. The goal is to maintain class oppression while muting class struggle.
• Fourth, not only through propaganda and socialization but also through "good works, " or the appearance of such, do capitalists achieve legitimacy and hegemony. As if by magic, the ruthless industrialist becomes the generous philanthropist; the expropriator becomes "a leader of society," a trustee of our social and cultural needs. To appreciative American audiences Mobil Corporation is better known as the sponsor of “Masterpiece Theater" than as the heartless exploiter of oil workers in the Middle East and elsewhere. Cornell, Johns Hopkins, Clark, Duke, Vanderbilt, Tulane and Stanford are no longer robber barons but prestigious universities. And Carnegie is remembered not for the workers he starved but for his Hall, his Endowment and his Institute. The primary goal of capitalist cultural dominance is not to provide us with nice concerts and museums but to give capitalism’s exploitative reality a providential appearance so that people learn not only to accept, but admire and appreciate, the leadership and stewardship of the owning class. Indeed, have we not heard working people say: "More for the rich means more for the rest of us because they create the jobs we need" and, of course, they “do a lot of other good things for society. "
In fact, they do perform some good works. Some of their policies do have beneficial spinoffs. This brings us back to Gramsci's brilliant insights about how hegemony works to induce the people to consent in their own oppression. Gramsci noted that the capitalist class achieves hegemony not only by propagating the right values, attitudes and beliefs but by actually preforming vital social functions that have diffuse benefits. Railroads and highways may enrichen the magnates, but they also provide transportation for much of the public. Private hospitals are for profits not for people, but people who can afford them do get treated. The law is a class instrument, but it must also to some degree be concerned with public safety. So with just about every cultural and social function: the ruling class must act affirmatively on behalf of public interests some of the time - at least in those situations where private profits can be made while servicing public needs. If the ruling class fails to do so, Gramsci notes, its legitimacy will decline, its cultural and national hegemony will falter and its power will shrink back to its police and military capacity, leaving it with a more overtly repressive but ultimately less secure rule.
What has been said so far should remind us (in the unlikely event we need reminding) that the struggle ahead will be long and difficult. But change and progressive victories are not impossible. The ruling class rules, but not quite in the way it wants. Its socializing agencies do not work with perfect effect - or else this essay could not have been written nor read and understood. There is just so much cover rulers can give to their injustices and just so many substantive concessions they can make. And the concessions become points of vulnerability. The law is an instrument of class control but an imperfect one, for successful struggles have been fought to defeat retrogressive laws and pass progressive ones that are socially desirable and the basis for further struggles. The media are propaganda machines for the owning class but to maintain their credibility they must give some attention to the realities people experience; they must deal with questions like: Why are my taxes so high? Why are people losing their jobs? Why is the river so polluted? Why are we in Vietnam (Lebanon, El Salvador, Nicaragua)? The media’s need to deal with such things - however haphazardly and insufficiently - is what leads conservatives to the conclusion that the media are infected with "liberal" biases.
The ruling class must forever contend with the democratic forces of working people, women, Afro-Americans, Latinos and other oppressed minorities...
To maintain its legitimacy and popular acceptance, the ruling class must maintain democratic appearances and to do that it must not only lie, distort and try to hide its oppressions and unjust privileges, but must occasionally give in to popular demands, giving a little in order to keep a lot. In time, the legitimating ideology becomes a two-edged sword. Bourgeois hypocrisies about “democracy" and “fair play" are more than just the tribute vice pays to virtue. Such standards put limitations on ruling-class oppression once the public takes them seriously and fights for them...
In sum, capitalist monopoly culture, like monopoly capitalist economy, suffers shall we say, from internal contradictions. It can invent and control just so much of reality. Its socialization is imperfect and sometimes self-defeating. Like any monopoly, it can not rest perfectly secure because it does not serve the people and is dedicated to the ultimately impossible task of trying to prevent history from happening. Its legitimating deceptions are soft spots of vulnerability, through which democratic forces can sometimes press for greater gains.
An understanding of monopoly culture shows us how difficult it is to fight capitalism on its own turf, but if I may paraphrase Lenin, sometimes that's the only turf available and we must use every platform we can get. At the same time we must continue to create alternatives to monopoly culture - alternative scholarship, radio, newspapers, schools and art. But such a "counterculture" must be grounded in an alternative politics and political party so that it confronts rather than evades the realities of class struggle and avoids devolving into cultural exotica and inner migration. It is easier to shock the bourgeoisie with cultural deviance than to defeat it with revolutionary political and cultural organization.
The struggle for state power is a struggle also to win back the entire cultural and social life of the people, so that someday we can say: This land is our land, and so too is this art and science, this learning and healing, this prayer and song, this peace and happiness.
