“Tragically, the well-off and the poor are often united in capitalist culture by their shared obsession with consumption.”[1]

Our old uncles Marx and Engels proclaim that the “history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles.”[2] Class in Marx and Engels’ view is defined by the relation of production, an enterprise that is vital to the development of any society or civilization. In the specific case of capitalism, two broad classes are formed: the proletariat and the bourgeois. In a nutshell, the bourgeois is interested in expanding the capital she/he owns, while the proletariat does not have any capital and thus has only her/his labor to offer for the capitalists. Marx and Engels further analyze that “[s]ociety as a whole is more and more splitting up into two great hostile camps, into two great classes directly facing each other.”[3] Compounded by the contradictions inherent in Capitalism and the oppressions that the proletarians experience, Marx and Engels prophesize that there will be a point when “the ruling classes tremble at a communist revolution,” which will usher in the “overthrow of all existing social conditions,”[4] the demise of capitalism, and hence the demise of the antagonistic class relations produced within such system.

Karl Marx (1818 - 1838)

The problem is, both Marx and Engels think the revolution is a teleologically inevitable event that will occur in their lifetime, that is, imminent. However, I am now writing in the soil of the United States of America, considered to be the superpower of today as the Roman Empire was to the antiquity — 167 years after the Manifesto was penned. And the US is a capitalist society among many others, in fact, the largest. Why has not the revolution occurred? And why, as hooks observes, class is the subject that makes us all tense, nervous, uncertain about where we stand,”[5] even among the American Left? The answers to the questions—of such a complex and nuanced topic—are deservedly manifold.

bell hooks recalls, “[As] a student I read Marx, Gramsci, and a host of other male thinkers on the subject of class,” but she concludes that although they provide us with useful theoretical frameworks, they are lacking the “tools for confronting the complexity of class in daily life.”[6] In other words, she demands for a concrete way in which the immediate problem of class, i.e., the gap of inequality that is ever widening,[7] the poor and the well-off. We are not even talking about the 99% vs. the 1%. Nay. We are talking of just within the 99%, the gap between the middle class and the poor and how it manifests in their daily life.

Professor bell hooks

It is useful here to consider Herbert Marcuse’s assertion that in advanced capitalist industrial societies “the progress of technological rationality is liquidating the oppositional and transcending elements in “higher culture.””[8] By this Marcuse means that the potentials of protests, oppositions, and of transcending that exist in many cultural avenues are flattened out to “their common denominator—the commodity form.”[9] That is, the commodification of all possible outlets of potential oppositions to the effect of invalidating the inherent potential opposition they possess. This process is achieved through the emphasis of immediate gratification: initially the libidinal erotic energies are part of the transcendent framework of sex—the Freudian sublimated sexuality—but now the erotic is reduced to the immediate sexual gratification or “desublimation—replacing mediated with immediate gratification.”[10] Hence one gets the purchasable gratification, is encouraged to get it, and is bombarded with gratification-centric messages. The result, however, becomes the myopic, anesthetizing effect of contentment (through mindless gratification) and conformity, devoid of the original potentiality of subversive and oppositional antagonisms. This example from sex extends too many other domains, bending all to its logic, prompting Marcuse to proclaim: “the music of the soul is also the music of salesmanship.”[11] Welcome to the Marcusean repressive desublimation.

Professor Herbert Marcuse (1898 - 1979)

hooks’ penetrating observation of trans-class consumption obsession can be seen as an instance of repressive desublimation. First, hooks observes that “the vast majority of this nation’s citizens were schooled in religious doctrine which emphasized the danger of wealth, greed, and covetousness.”[12] Focusing one’s life on material gain was viewed as decadent that “[a]nyone walking on such a path would necessarily be estranged from community.”[13] This instance parallels that that Marcuse had discussed before on things socially discouraged, e.g., unbridled sexuality. But soon this view on wealth changed to the belief that being wealthy is desirous and encouraged—a desublimation. And most importantly, that “everyone could become rich simply by working hard.”[14] As such the view on wealth is now totally reversed. This reversion plays well into the capitalist urge to expanding capital and wealth. For the poor however, this reversion of belief posits a responsibility for the poverty of the poor class to themselves. That is, if everyone can be rich by working hard, the poor is not working hard enough, and hence deserves the condition of their poverty. Therefore, the poor becomes the victim of their own short-sightedness.

In order to work, this ideology of self-sufficiency and self-responsibility in reaching material success must be embedded in both classes, but especially the poor. Hence, hooks observes, “[m]ass media attempts to brainwash working-class and poor people so that they, too, internalize these assumptions.”[15] Once the poor buys into this ideology as well, they will start to believe that their poverty is solely to their own lack of effort. Consequently, to make enough effort will yield to observable effect: material gain, increasing wealth, and the gradual shift from the poor class. And how does this change of class position is prominently detectable and displayed? Conspicuous consumption. This conclusion to consume makes repressive desublimation of what started as religious ideals, i.e., material accumulation as something to be avoided, has now become success-defining and encouraged. In fact, in line with Marcuse’s analysis of commodification and repressive desublimation that focus on instant gratification, the subject of poverty as a class identification itself has now become a commodity: You consume on poverty by conspicuous consumption. Every consumption that one does will exhaust poverty as a commodity (that is, something that can diminish). Now that poverty is commoditized, class distinction becomes meaningless: class is just an excuse of not wanting to give enough effort. Class is nonexistent, an outdated concept. Hence, we see the reluctance of many people to discuss the subject of class.

For instance, let us take a look at the recently burgeoning ideology of conscious capitalism. Here are CEOs and entrepreneurs convinced that there is a higher purpose that can be squeezed out of the whole capitalist system. The system can go bad if unchecked and uncontrolled, thus the need to control and direct it to a higher purpose, to do ‘good’ for society beyond just profits: “By focusing on its deeper Purpose, a conscious business inspires, engages and energizes its stakeholders. Employees, customers and others trust and even love companies that have an inspiring purpose.”[16] Whole Foods is one of the most often cited models of this Conscious Capitalism, with their all green and ‘whole’ selections of products: organic, healthy, ethical; just being there makes one feels good! But what movements like these fail to eventually address is the fundamental nature of capitalism itself that feeds on inequality and labor exploitation no matter how high of a purpose one tries to mask them. In fact, it is rather chilling now that capitalism assumes the discourse of a higher purpose, with implied floating air of sacredness and spiritual feeling to it: Capitalism now can and want to eat the cake, too. This is another form of repressive desublimation, incorporating ethics and moral dimensions directly sewn to the fabric of capitalist guilt: Businesses can now flourish without the threats of the vices of capitalism which has now been purified through the assignment of a higher purpose à la Conscious Capitalism. And everyone wants to go to Whole Foods instead of Walmart—the illusion of choice. It works.

Thus, the reign of repressive desublimation in also answers for why capitalism is still here and will be here for some time to come: The collapse of the antagonistic classes which are now “united in capitalist culture by their shared obsession with consumption.”[17]

[1] bell hooks, Where We Stand: Class Matters (New York: Routledge, 2000), 46.

[2] Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, The Communist Manifesto: A Road Map to History's Most Important Political Document (Chicago: Haymarket Books, 2005), 39.

[3] Ibid., 40.

[4] Ibid., 89

[5] hooks, Where We Stand, vii.

[6] Ibid.,43.

[7] See, e.g., Thomas Piketty, Capital in the Twenty-First Century (Harvard: Harvard University Press, 2014). The most recent scholarship that shows how capitalism exhibits a tendency to drive the wealth inequality gap wider and wider.

[8] Herbert Marcuse, One-Dimensional Man (New York: Routledge, 2002), 59.

[9] Ibid., 61.

[10] Ibid., 75.

[11] Ibid.

[12] hooks, Where We Stand, 44.

[13] Ibid.

[14] Ibid.

[15] Ibid., 46.

[16] From http://www.consciouscapitalism.org/purpose

[17] Hooks, Where We Stand, 46.

Bibliography

hooks, bell. Where We Stand: Class Matters. New York: Routledge, 2000.

Marcuse, Herbert. One-dimensional Man. New York: Routledge, 2002.

Marx, Karl, and Friedrich Engels. The Communist Manifesto: A Road Map to History's Most Important Political Document. Edited by Philip Gasper. Chicago: Haymarket Books, 2005.

Piketty, Thomas. Capital in the Twenty-first Century. Translated by Arthur Goldhammer. Harvard: Harvard University Press, 2014.