– Rosa Luxembourg, The War and the Workers
Article II
As Peter Decker and Konrad Hecker ask in Das Proletariat, “why do wage laborers put up with a community that systematically degrades them into maneuverable masses of capitalistic property and the omnipresent state force apparatus?” The answer is something that has been called “false consciousness” (by Marx) or “corporate conscience” (by Luther Gulick). Whatever we call it, it could be described as a sort of apathy about one’s condition and the world around it, at least inasmuch as a worker simply goes about his day working and neglects often to even imagine that he has an alternative. Gulick suggests in Play on Democracy that this “corporate conscience” is “rendered necessary by the complex interdependence of modern life.” And, those in power would have it no other way.
Of course, the common worker cannot even fathom that he might escape this system. Decker and Konrad suggest that common workers operate under the assumption that “they have no other means,” that they have a sense that “nothing different probably remains for them than to resign themselves to it and make peace with their alternativeless situation in life.” This is the necessary condition of life in the modern civilization. As long as workers are separated from their products (as discussed in Article I), as long as the food is locked up and we must take part in our modern consumer capitalist society by becoming wage slaves, we must be alienated from the processes that are larger than us (although we must also have the illusion of participation).
In the Port Huron Statement, the founding document of Students for a Democratic Society, it is argued that “the apathy here is, first subjective—the felt powerlessness of ordinary people, the resignation before the enormity of events.” It is further suggested that “subjective apathy is encouraged by the objective American situation—the actual structural separation of people from power, from relevant knowledge, from pinnacles of decision-making… The very isolation of the individual—from power and community and ability to aspire—means the rise of a democracy without publics.” Cross apply this situation to all developed countries around the world. And, “with the great mass of people structurally remote and psychologically hesitant with respect to democratic institutions, those institutions themselves attenuate and become, in the fashion of the vicious circle, progressively less accessible to those few who aspire to serious participation in social affairs. The vital democratic connection between community and leadership, between the mass and the several elites, has been so wrenched an perverted that disastrous politics go unchallenged time and again.” What begins as a separation in the workplace leads to detachment in all realms of modern life. As Dr. Erich Fromm once said, “our contemporary western society… tends to undermine the inner security, happiness, reason and the capacity for love in the individual; it tends to turn him into an automaton who pays for his human failure with increasing mental sickness…”
The exact definition of this sickness is a matter for a separate debate. At this time, we must instead focus on how the workers’ position is sustained in this system. Simon-Nicholas Henri Linguet argued that “it has always been necessary for the majority of men to continue to live in the pay of and in dependence on the minority which has appropriated to itself all wealth.” He suggested that this meant “slavery has therefore been perpetuated on the earth, but under a sweeter name. Among us now it is adorned with the title of service.” And, in order to maintain this system, to keep us all in “service,” those in power must distract the masses from the larger reality. As Paulo Freire suggests in Pedagogy of the Oppressed, “as the oppressor minority subordinates and dominates the majority, it must divide it and keep it divided in order to remain in power.”
The methodology to this can be varied, of course. We might find ourselves being told about terrorists on the other side of the world bent on destroying us. We might find ourselves caught up in wars abroad that have no direct link to our nation and especially not to our everyday lives. We could be distracted by partisan politics and partisan news pulling us back and forth (or more likely, reinforcing our position farther and farther to one side or the other). But, it doesn’t have to be social or cultural upheaval that distracts us. We might simply find ourselves distracted by the latest reality show on television, or in more “innocent” times, we could find ourselves distracted by amusements like freak or carnival shows. Whatever the distraction is, “it is in the interest of the oppressor to weaken the oppressed still further, to isolate them, to create and deepen rifts among them…the more alienated people are, the easier it is to divide them and keep them divided” (Freire, 141-2).
As far as the more innocent distraction goes, amusement parks and the like, one could look back to the early days of Coney Island. Maxim Gorky, in response to middle and working class folk escaping their humdrum lives at Coney Island, “pronounced it a ‘marsh of glittering boredom,’ particularly pernicious because it stupefied the working people, poisoned their souls, and reinforced their subjection… In an age of mass culture, amusement emerged as the new opiate of the people.” (Kasson 108-9). A Russian revolutionary, Marxist terminology again, yes. But, such things are necessary when discussing matters of workers and the distraction that keeps us from even noticing the false consciousness that keeps us from noticing the alternativeless conditions of our lives…
This is as good a place as any to discuss, albeit briefly, the simplest terms of Marxism for the lay person reading this. Marxism is a methodology for study, an approach to historiography that focuses on class warfare, i.e. disputes between the various classes that are inherent to the existence of those classes as separate entities. In a capitalist system, the bourgeoisie as a class must maintain position over the proletariat class. Again, in simpler terms, the employer has to keep the worker down. There is simply no other way to profit but to pay the worker less than his output is worth or (alternatively) to charge a consumer more for said output than it is worth. In terms of the current discussion, the existence of amusements or distractions allow for the lower classes to remain beneath the upper classes. The occasional amusement, nightly lulling doses of television, the occasional film or theater outing, carnival rides, music… these things raise the spirit of the worker long enough that he doesn’t mind so much when he has to return to his daily labor.
Outside of amusement, there is the distraction of purported terrorism or war. As Freire’s argument continues, “for the oppressors to keep the oppressed from perceiving their strategy… the former must convince the latter that they are being ‘defended’ against the demonic action of ‘marginals, rowdies, and enemies of God’” (146). Whether it is the new immigrant, which in American history for example has been from various places depending on the decade. Lately, the fear is of the Muslim, “creeping shariah” and the like. Middle America is not simply afraid of terrorists out to kill us but Muslim immigrants who are out to alter our culture. For that matter, there is plenty of fear to go around regarding our own President and his attempts to undermine our Constitution, to destroy our very way of life.
But, it has always been like this; the new and unknown scares us. And, it’s not always the immigrants; After World War I (or II for that matter) redefined gender roles horrified American men. And, regarding the aforementioned Coney Island, James Gibbons Huneker was disturbed by the surrender of reason that went hand in hand with attending such amusements. He suggested that the “unreality” of such an experience was “greedily craved by the mob as alcohol by the dipsomaniac.” In modern terms, that’s essentially alcoholism. Huneker feared this unruly mob, out for amusement as opposed to the self-improvement of old genteel culture. Notably, he suggested in New Cosmopolis that “once en masse, humanity sheds its civilization and becomes half child, half savage… It will lynch an innocent man or glorify a scamp politician with equal facility.” And, in what situation does history give us lynchings but when one group hated or feared another, a perfect example of the necessary division within the lower classes.
If not the opportunity of temporary amusement apart from the workday, there might be an increase in wages. Decker and Konrad suggest this is a case of “a bit more wages [that] is supposed to compel appreciative docility” toward employers. And, of course, there’s the idea, especially in America, that any of us can advance further in our careers, that any one of us can be rich and successful if we just work hard enough. There is a distinct Protestant ethic in play here that will be discussed further in Article III. For now, it is well enough to establish the notion that a worker given the idea that he might advance is more likely to continue working rather than to sabotage his factory or office or strike en masse with his fellow workers. If amusement and distraction are not enough for him to return to work when it comes time for that, then the possibility that he might one day be a higher class of worker will be enough.
And, this would all be a workable system as long as no worker ever noticed, as long as the false consciousness is perfectly maintained. But, in no society has this ever been the case. And, secondary to that, there is the matter of there being enough employment for every individual who needs it. When one is out of work, one is less likely (perhaps) to be docile, to simply go along to get along. Absent government assistance, the unemployed have a far greater struggle in everyday life than can be distracted from with simple amusements or illusory distractions. Arguably, wage labor loses to the practice of slavery here in caring for the worker rather than simply employing him. Though, it comes from a racist perspective and supports a position that should be long left behind by enlightened society, James Henry Hammond’s Mudsill Theory speech contains an interesting distinction between slavery and wage labor. He says:
“…the man who lives by daily labor, and scarcely lives at that, and who has to put out his labor in the market, and take the best he can get for it; in short, your whole hireling class of manual laborers and "operatives," as you call them, are essentially slaves. The difference between us is, that our slaves are hired for life and well compensated; there is no starvation, no begging, no want of employment among our people, and not too much employment either. Yours are hired by the day, not cared for, and scantily compensated, which may be proved in the most painful manner, at any hour in any street in any of your large towns.”
The capitalist wage labor system, even if it succeeds with a false consciousness, still results in unemployment, in homelessness, hunger. In short, there is inevitable discontent whether the system succeeds or not. Marx and Engels suggests that “the modern worker… sinks ever deeper beneath the circumstances of his own class.
“The worker becomes a pauper, and pauperism develops more quickly than population and wealth. It should not be obvious that the bourgeoisie is incapable of continuing as the ruling class of society and of enforcing its own conditions of life on society as sovereign law. It is incapable of ruling because it is incapable of assuring its slave any kind of existence within his slavery, because it is forced to let him sink into a condition where it must feed him, instead of being fed by him.”
And, brining all of this back into politics, choosing our governmental officials still is not enough to alter the system. Lenin, in State and Revolution, suggests that “Marx splendidly grasped this essence of capitalist democracy, when, in analysing the experience of the Commune, he said that the oppressed were allowed, once every few years, to decide which particular representatives of the oppressing class should be in parliament to represent and repress them!”
A Representative government will not get the necessary work done. Only pure democracy (or, practically speaking, as national populations tend to be too large for such a thing to work, whatever system we can find that is close to it, Participation Democracy, Participatory Politics and Economics (Parpolity and Parecon), just to name a couple) can take into account the needs of the proletariat sufficiently.
The original SDS sought “the establishment of a democracy of individual participation governed by two central aims: that the individual share in those social decisions determining the quality and direction of his life; that society be organized to encourage independence in men and provide the media for their common participation” (Port Huron Statement). Is the possibility of participation in life-changing decision making such a horrible thing to have in the common man? Is independence?
