I am going to respectfully disagree with some parts of this essay. I emphasize "respectfully" because I have so much respect for this writer who has taught me a lot. But like all serious social/political critics, he (and I) sometimes fail to achieve perfect understanding of our subject. All we can do is the best that we can do, fully realizing that our efforts will sometimes fall short. When this happens, we must depend on others to challenge what we write so that together we activists can unravel the mystery of the continuing rule of world societies by a tiny few.
What I take issue with in this essay is the confusion about what I identify as propaganda designed by the One Percent versus the real views of ruling class directors. Over the approximately 400 years of capitalist rule, this has steadily become more difficult to distinguish because of a development identified by Dolack:
Capitalism...requires a literate, educated population, in contrast to earlier systems, and a literate, educated populace is more inclined and more able to agitate for its interests.Hence, the need for more and more agencies of propaganda and indoctrination, subterfuge, and especially for secret agencies like NSA and CIA to function outside of public purview.
Because capitalist ruling classes came to power by using the ideology of "democracy" in order to gain the support of working people in their struggle against monarchy and aristocracy (for more details, read my commentaries here and here), the history of Western capitalist societies has to a considerable extent been a history of the development of methods to deal with the rising expectations by workers for real democracy. Because the capitalist economy over time required workers to become more educated, the capitalist ruling class had to strengthen the methods of indoctrination and propaganda, to create a largely fake government and elections, secret agencies, militarized police forces, and widespread surveillance of citizens as we see today.
