Critiques of ideology, myths and beliefs

Critiques of ideology, myths and beliefs

Thorstein Veblen (1857-1929) The Leisure Class and Conspicuous Consumption (24)

The Theory of the Leisure Class: An Economic Study of Institutions(1899) • One of first detailed critiques of consumerism • Another critique of utilitarianism • Economic life is driven not by notions of utility, but by social vestiges from pre-historic times • Beginning with primitive tribes, people began to adopt a division of labor along certain lines, "higher status" group monopolized war and hunting, while farming and cooking were considered inferior work • A culture of barbarismand conquest placed some tribes over others • Conquerors relegated menial and labor-intensive jobs to the subjugated people, while retaining warlike and violent work • Watching this labor division take place in other groups, some individuals began to emulate behavior of higher-status groups

Leisure class • Leisure class:the emerging ruling class that benefits most from a capitalist economic system built on “waste” • while this class did perform some work and contributed to the tribe's well-being, it did so in only a minor, peripheral, and largely symbolic manner • The leisure class managed to retain its position through both direct and indirect coercion, e.g., • it reserved for itself the "honor" of warfare, and often prevented members of the lower classes from owning weapons or learning how to fight • it made the rest of the tribe feel dependent on the leisure class's continued existence due to the fear of hostilities from other tribes or, as religions began to form, the hostility of imagined deities • Veblen argued that the first priests and religious leaders were members of the leisure class

Conspicuous consumption & conspicuous leisure • conspicuous consumption: the use of money or other resources to display a higher social status than others, e.g., • “Veblen goods” refers to commodities for which people's demand increases as their price increases, since greater price confers greater status, instead of decreasing according to the law of demand – handbags, watches, etc. • conspicuous leisure: time given to certain pursuits in return for higher status, e.g., • to be a “gentleman,” a man must study such things as philosophy and the fine arts, which have little economic value in themselves but display freedom from economic necessity

Leisure class & conspicuous consumption • Members of all classes “waste” both time & money as means to improve self-esteem & elevate status • “Parasitic” business leaders “sabotaged” the industrial system in their personal quest for profit • Modern-day conflict is between • “business” (those who make money) and • “industry” (those who make things)

Social implications • Subjugation of women • “Trophy wife” shows off a man’s success (like barbarians’ "trophies of war”) • By not allowing his wife to work outside the home, a man could show off her conspicuous leisure as proof of his status and spend money on his wife through conspicuous consumption • Growth of sports such as football • Used to display conspicuous leisure • Religion as an expression of both conspicuous leisure and conspicuous consumption • From an economic point of view, churches are a waste of building space, the clergy a group paid to do nothing useful • Manners and etiquette become practices of conspicuous leisure with no practical value

Antonio Gramsci (1891-1937) Hegemony and the Ruling Ideas

Hegemony • Hegemony refers to ideological domination over subordinate classes • Bourgeoisie maintained dominance not primarily through coercion or force but through spontaneous consent of the ruled

Ideological superstructure has two levels • political society: “the State;” the police, the army, legal system, etc., which dominates directly and coercively • civil society: the family, the education system, trade unions, etc., where leadership is constituted through ideology or by means of consent

Why did Europe’s working class act against its own class interests by supporting fascism? • Proletariat adopts as its own the values, beliefs, and attitudes that serve the interests of the ruling class • It’s socialized – esp. through educational system – into accepting bourgeois ideology as an unquestioned commonsense view of the world and their place in it

Counter-hegemony is required to spark unified popular revolt • Counter-hegemony or “organic” consciousness would unmask the real sources of workers’ oppression and articulate the real interests and needs of the masses • Praxis: connects theoretical insights to active attempts to fashion more just society

Double standards on Debt? “At the same time, there is something profoundly deceptive going on here. All these moral dramas start from the assumption that personal debt is ultimately a matter of self-indulgence, a sin against one’s loved ones—and therefore that redemption must necessarily be a matter of ascetic self-denial. What’s being shunted out of sight here is first of all the fact that everyone is now in debt (US household debt is now estimated at on average 130% of income), and that very little of this debt was accrued by those determined to find money to bet on horses or toss away on fripperies. Insofar as it was borrowed for what economists like to call discretionary spending, it was mainly to be given to children, to share with friends, or otherwise to be able to build and maintain relations with other human beings that are based on something other than sheer material calculation. One must go into debt to achieve a life that goes in any way beyond sheer survival.” (Graeber, Debt: The First 5,000 Years, Melville Press, 2011, p. 379)

Critiques of ideology, myths and beliefs