Surviving Capitalism (Not) : The Propaganda System That Has Helped Create a Permanent Overclass Is Over a Century in the Making

We’ve lived so long under the spell of hierarchy—from god-kings to feudal lords to party bosses—that only recently have we awakened to see not only that “regular” citizens have the capacity for self-governance, but that without their engagement our huge global crises cannot be addressed. The changes needed for human society simply to survive, let alone thrive, are so profound that the only way we will move toward them is if we ourselves, regular citizens, feel meaningful ownership of solutions through direct engagement. Our problems are too big, interrelated, and pervasive to yield to directives from on high.
—Frances Moore Lappé, excerpt from Time for Progressives to Grow Up

Monday, April 15, 2013

The Propaganda System That Has Helped Create a Permanent Overclass Is Over a Century in the Making

Click here to access article by Andrew Gavin Marshall from his blog.

Although my academic background was in sociology (BA), by reading this article I still managed to learn a lot about its role in the ideological engineering of the masses.

I entered the field of sociology as a very naive student with idealistic notions of the pursuit of truth which I assumed universities provided. I initially performed my studies very well and was rewarded by my professors. But, eventually when I began to use some Marxist intellectual tools to critique the writings of the "godfathers" of established sociology, I suddenly met with a very negative reception by the same professors. This academic process of screening out those who refuse to be indoctrinated has been well covered by Jeff Schmidt in his book Disciplined Minds.

Ironically this experience really accelerated my informal education. I began to see the strong ideological component of it and began to study this phenomenon further, but independently. In the course of my independent studies, I began to realize that US institutions of high learning were used effectively to indoctrinate people whom the One Percent ("owners" of the economy) needed in order to manage their economic enterprises and to work in other important institutions without questioning the purposes of their work, the policies of the One Percent, or any significant aspect of the organization of society imposed by the "owners" of the economy on the 99 Percent.

Information about the pervasive uses of class-based ideological manipulation and control, for obvious reasons, has always been difficult to obtain. Marshall, in this piece, offers a valuable contribution toward our understanding of the subject so that we can effectively counter the efforts of the One Percent to manipulate us to serve their interests instead of our interests. Intellectuals like Marshall, who must function outside the One Percent's institutions of higher learning, cannot continue to do this by themselves. Thus, we simply must support them with funding because they are one of us and fighting for us in this class war.