>But how about the ... bartender I overheard in Toronto saying that Bill
Gates >deserved "every penny" of his fortune? That's a different kind of
weird. Why
>do people think that way?
Gulick:
Doug raises a crucial question. Steeped in a populist outlook, much of the U.S. "left" (such as it is) clings to a vulgar "propaganda" model of what ideology is and how it works. E.g., the critique of the corporate media: the ruling class controls the means of mass communication. Their paid hirelings are offered all kinds of incentives (adulation, promotion) and threatened with all kinds of sanctions (ostracism, unemployment) to conceal the truth and to fabricate lies. The implicit solution is to back the independent press, i.e., those who have no stake in distoring social reality. Problem is, such a perspective naively assumes that with accurate information -- i.e., once the veil of illusions is stripped away -- people will be able to rationally assess what's in their best individual/collective self-interest and act accordingly. But ideology is not just the sum total of deceptions manipulately imposed upon otherwise clear- minded adults. We are born into a social universe suffused with ideology and our most mundane thoughts, feelings, and so on are shot through with ideology from the get-go. My so saying probably does not constitute a revolutionary revelation for anyone on LBO-list, but nonetheless a lot of the political practice of the U.S. "left" (such as it is) seems to be informed by (a dumbed-down version of) the Enlightenment principle of "the truth shall set you free." Before the German Communist Party and the psychotherapy profession hounded him into quackery (orgone energy and all, which laid the basis for charlatans like Fred Newman and Lenora Fulani to claim his mantle), Wilhelm Reich was undertaking incredibly inspired Freudian-Marxist research on the formation of political ideology in social class-specific families, research which punctured holes in the crude "propaganda" model of ideology.
Joanna:
>My guess: because instead of identifying with their real selves, they
>identify with their ideal selves, which are basically cultural constructs.
>In this society Bill Gates is constructed as the ideal individual who we
>all aspire to equal. If he deserves his fortune, so ultimately will I when
>I get my fortune. Ha. Ha.
Gordon:
>Locke-thought is popular with many of the lower orders. My
>guess is that they perceive the collectivities to which they
>are assigned as stealing from them and imprisoning them, and
>long for a totally atomized society in which they can at least
>breathe free -- indeed, a desert island -- just as the nascent
>bourgeoisie for whom Locke wrote did a few centuries ago.
Gulick:
I think both Joanna and Gordon, each in their own ways, are on to something here. Despite the tenacity of the myth of the self-made man (sic) in the U.S., on a sub-concious level most ordinary slobs (sic) sense that they'll be stuck in the same lot, slightly better- or slightly worse-off, for the rest of their lives. Moreover, in a barely perceptible way, most folks recognize that the prospects for radical social change are dim as well (perhaps for some of the reasons Gordon specifies). By defending Bill Gates' entitlement to fabulous wealth they defend not an "ideal self" they realistically _expect_ to become, nor even so much an "ideal self" they unrealistically _hope_ to become. Rather, given their resignation to the permanence of vast inequalities, they defend Bill Gates' riches b/c they don't want to expend their scarce mental and emotional energies being bitter about something they can't change -- in other words, they, in Bourdieu's words, come to "love the inevitable." Like Gordon says, they embrace Gates' attainment of obscene wealth b/c it sybmolizes freedom from a system which crushes them at every turn (and not just by means of exploitation formally defined), a system which most of them sub-consciously recognize will spare them no escape. In other words, it is the precise _absence of expectation_ of becoming Bill Gates that compels them, under conditions of political hopelessness, to defend Bill Gates' right to amass huge amounts of wealth. A seemingly innocuous remark such as "Bill Gates deserves every penny" thus materializes a whole host of barely intelligible feelings and thoughts about what is and what is not possible in this world for the person who utters it.
Bourdieu in _Outline of a Theory of Practice_:
"... practical evaluation of the likelihood of success of a given action in a given situation brings into play a whole body of sayings, commonplaces, ethical precepts ... agents make a virtue of necessity, that is, to refuse what is anyway refused and to love the inevitable ..."