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Title: Gangsters for Capitalism Author: Colin Jenkins Date: January 26, 2017 Language: en Topics: empire, imperialism, anti-imperialism, anti-war, war, working class, United States, military, culture, capitalism, anti-capitalist, state, security culture, government Source: Retrieved on 3/6/17 from http://longreads.tni.org/state-of-power/gangsters-capitalism/
Through its reliance on the relationship between labour and capital,
fortified by state-enforced protections for private property to
facilitate this relationship, capitalism creates a natural dependency on
wages for the vast majority. With the removal of 'the commons' during
the transition from feudalism to capitalism, the peasantry was
transformed into a working-class majority that now must serve as both
commodities and tools for those who own the means of production.
While those of us born into the working-class majority have little or no
choice but to submit to our ritualistic commodification, we are
sometimes presented with degrees of options regarding how far we allow
capitalists, landlords, corporations, and their politicians to
dehumanize us as their tools.
While we are forced into the labour market, for example, we can
sometimes choose public jobs over private, therefore limiting the degree
of exploitation. While we are forced to find housing, we may sometimes
choose to live in communal situations with family or friends.
One of the areas where total choice is allowed is in the business of
Empire, particularly in the maintenance and proliferation of the modern
US Empire. Although governments worldwide are using technological
advances in robotics to replace human bodies in their military ranks,
and thus lessen their dependence on the working class, there is still a
heavy reliance on people to act as tools of war. In 'all-volunteer'
militaries like that of the United States', 'willingness' is still a
crucial component to the mission.
As global capitalism's forerunner and guardian, the US military has
nearly 3 million employees worldwide, including active duty and reserve
personnel and 'civilian full-time equivalents'. The US Department of
Defense's official proposed budget for FY 2017 is $582.7 billion ,
which, combined with corollary systems of 'security', swells to over $1
trillion.
According to public Pentagon reports , the US Empire officially
comprises of 662 overseas military bases across 38 countries. Since the
birth of the United States in 1776, the country has been involved in a
war or military conflict in 219 of these 240 years.
Throughout this history, the US government, which has directly
represented and acted upon the interests of capital and economic elites,
has required the participation of many millions of its working-class
citizens to join its military ranks in order to carry out its missions
by force.
For many generations, the US working class has answered this call to
serve as what US Marine General Smedley Butler once deemed, 'gangsters
for capitalism'. Millions upon millions have lost life and limb to clear
the path for new global markets, steal and extract valuable natural
resources from other lands, and ensure the procurement of trillions of
dollars of corporate profit for a privileged few.
Why? Why does the working class willingly, even enthusiastically, join
to serve in a military that bolsters the very system which undermines
and alienates them in their everyday lives?
We can start to answer this question by drawing on Antonio Gramsci's
concept of cultural hegemony to see how capitalist interests have shaped
the dominant culture in US society. Utilising Hegel's binary of social
influence, where societal power is jockeyed between 'political society'
and 'civil society' Gramsci suggested that power is based on two forms:
coercion (Dominio) or consensus (Direzione).
According to Gramsci, the battle over ideology between the ruling and
subaltern classes is ultimately won through 'the hegemony of one social
group over the whole of society exercised through so-called private
organizations, such as the church, trade unions, schools, etc.'
Under capitalism, the hierarchy relies on the state to control and
dictate these central organs of ideological influence, thus establishing
cultural hegemony. This isn't necessarily done in a highly centralized
or coordinated manner by a tight-knit group, but rather occurs naturally
through the mechanisms of the economic system.
Just as the economic base shapes society's 'superstructure', the
superstructure in turn solidifies the interests of the economic base. In
this cycle, the interests of the capitalist class are morphed into the
interests of the working class.
Unearthing these dynamics allows us to explain why impoverished
Americans living in dilapidated trailers and depending on government
projects still proudly wave the red, white, and blue cloth; why tens of
millions of impoverished people measure their value according to which
designer clothes or sneakers they're wearing; why these same tens of
millions, who can barely afford basic necessities to survive, spend much
of their waking time gawking at and worshipping obscenely wealthy
celebrities; or why over 100 million working-class people show up every
few years to vote for politicians that do not represent them.
It also allows us to explain, at least in part, why members of the
working class so willingly carry out the brutalization of their class
peers by serving in imperialistic militaries and militarized police
forces.
This culture, which is ultimately shaped by capitalism, receives its
values through many different channels, formal and informal. Part of
this is accomplished through formal education, where traditional
intellectuals become more specialized, and where the process of learning
and thinking is replaced by indoctrination.
In his 1926 examination of the 'Southern Question' , Gramsci wrote of
this phenomenon:
The old type of intellectual was the organizing element in a society
with a mainly peasant and artisanal basis. To organize the State, to
organize commerce, the dominant class bred a particular type of
intellectual… the technical organizer, the specialist in applied
science... it is this second type of intellectual which has prevailed,
with all his characteristics of order and intellectual discipline.
While Gramsci was specifically referring to the dominant intellectuals
in northern Italy during his time, and how they influenced the 'rural
bourgeoisie' and their 'crazy fear of the peasants', he was also
expounding on the general development of a cultural hegemony that
characterizes the capitalist system:
The first problem to resolve… was how to modify the political stance and
general ideology of the proletariat itself, as a national element which
exists within the ensemble of State life and is unconsciously subjected
to the influence of bourgeois education, the bourgeois press and
bourgeois traditions.
Uncovering these hegemonic elements stemming from society's economic
base, according to Gramsci, was crucial in exposing the ruling-class
propaganda that seeped through layer upon layer of working-class and
peasant cultures of the time.
So, how does Gramsci's analysis play out today? Within systems of formal
education, it exposes the strict parameters set by the capitalist modes
of production and the social norms that result. It explains why formal
education, even at its highest level, often takes the form of
indoctrination.
A prime example of this indoctrination can be seen in the field of
Economics, whose students at the most prestigious institutions and
earning the highest academic achievements seem unable to apply their
thought beyond the narrow confines of classical liberalism and its
modern form of neoliberal capitalism.
They may be Ivy League PhDs, members of the Federal Reserve, or highly
influential presidential cabinet members, but all exhibit an
unwillingness or inability to see the most obvious of contradictions
within their theory.
The indoctrination that has essentially taken over all fields of formal
'study' and 'expertise' inevitably flows throughout society, originating
from elite institutions that are specifically designed to justify and
maintain the economic base, and transferred from there into so-called
public policy.
In turn, public education programmes that are shaped by the capitalist
hierarchy are not concerned with the students' ability to comprehend or
critically think, but rather with turning them into 'docile and passive
tools of production'.
Part of this process is focused on the creation of obedient workers who
are minimally competent to fulfil their exploitative labour role; and
another part is focused on preventing the same workers from being able
to critically think about, and thus recognize, their exploited labour
role within this system. The former fetishizes obedience, control, and
'work ethic'; the latter obstructs awareness and resistance.
These formal, 'public' structures of dominant ideology are naturally
coupled with more informal arrangements deriving from the market system,
notably the consumption process. As such, workers are moulded through a
structured progression that begins at birth.
In fulfilling this role, workers become consumers in the market for both
necessary and conspicuous consumption. As the US capitalist system has
become ever more reliant on conspicuous consumption (evidenced in the
'supply-side' phenomenon of the 1980s), this way of life once reserved
for the 'leisure class' has now taken hold of the 'industrious class'
(working class).
This intensification of the consumption process has exposed the working
class to informal channels of indoctrination, established through
advertising and marketing, popular entertainment such as television
shows, movies, and video games, and the arrival of a billion-dollar
voyeur industry based on worshipping the 'cult of personality' and
celebrity (and, thus, wealth).
Clearly, when consumption becomes the only goal in life, people are
pushed to consume more and more. In doing so, the working class is
serving capitalist culture even in its 'personal life'. And through this
manufactured encouragement to consume lies a complementary ideology that
convinces working-class folks to literally buy into, become vested in,
and thus serve and protect, the capitalist system.
In a class-based society, fear becomes a convenient and effective tool
in shaping ideology and pushing through ruling-class agendas with
widespread working-class approval.
As in Gramsci's notion of cultural hegemony, where the interests of the
owners and facilitators of capital are gradually accepted as the
interests of the masses, issues of security also become blurred between
those designed to protect the powerful and those designed to protect the
powerless.
The modern security culture that has come to fruition in the US,
especially after 9/11, compels masses of citizens to not only be
subjected to increasing measures of authority and surveillance, but also
to join in the effort to carry out these measures. Americans do so with
a shocking willingness.
The reasons for this unquestioned submission to authority can be found
in the most blatant of examples: the formation of the US Patriot Act.
With the threat of 'extreme Islam' and 'global terrorism,' such
legislation passed with ease because, like all such measures, it
exploits the emotional (and irrational) needs brought on by fear.
Mark Neocleous tells us :
Security presupposes exclusion. Take the piece of legislation passed
just a few weeks after the attack on the World Trade Centre, called the
Uniting and Strengthening America by Providing Appropriate Tools
Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism Act. Coming in at over 340
pages and carrying twenty-one legal amendments, the Act was said to be
necessary and essential to the new security project about to be
unleashed on the world.
It changed criminal law and immigration procedures to allow people to be
held indefinitely, altered intelligence-gathering procedures to allow
for the monitoring of people's reading habits through surveillance of
library and bookshop records, and introduced measures to allow for
greater access to property, email, computers, and financial and
educational records. But if the Act is about security, it is also
immediately notable for the wordy title, designed for the acronym it
produces: USA PATRIOT. The implication is clear: this is an Act for
American patriotism. To oppose it is unpatriotic .
This modern security culture has also taken on an extremely broad and
vague agenda of 'national security', a term that represents a very
specific construction of government strategy designed to create a
catch-all apparatus that accommodates the never-ending growth of the
military-industrial complex.
In fact, the term was deliberately chosen as a play of words with
'national defense', used during post-World War II reconfiguration
efforts aimed at creating 'a unified military establishment along with a
national defense council'.
'By 1947, "common defense" had been dropped and replaced with "national
security" - hence the creation of the National Security Council and the
National Security Act.' The purpose of this change in wording was tipped
by Navy Secretary James Forrestal, who 'commented that "national
security" can only be secured with a broad and comprehensive front',
while explaining, 'I am using the word "security" here consistently and
continuously rather than "defense''.
As Neocleous notes, "security" was a far more expansive term than
"defense", which was seen as too narrowly military, and far more
suggestive than "national interest", seen by many as either too weak a
concept to form the basis of the exercise of state power or, with its
selfish connotations, simply too negative'.
This conscious shift from 'defense' to 'security' was made for fairly
obvious reasons. President Dwight Eisenhower's outgoing speech in 1961,
which included an eerie warning of a creeping military-industrial
complex that had become largely unaccountable, exposed the underlying
reason in a rare act of deep truth coming from a major political figure.
In a similar act some four decades earlier, US Major General Smedley
Butler exposed the embryo of this insidious institution , famously
equating his 33-year military career to serving 'as a high-class muscle
man for big business, Wall St., and the bankers' and 'a racketeer and
gangster for capitalism' by making:
Mexico, and especially Tampico, safe for American oil interests in 1914.
I helped make Haiti and Cuba a decent place for the National City Bank
boys to collect revenues in. I helped in the raping of half a dozen
Central American republics for the benefit of Wall Street. I helped
purify Nicaragua for the International Banking House of Brown Brothers
in 1902-1912. I brought light to the Dominican Republic for the American
sugar interests in 1916. I helped make Honduras right for the American
fruit companies in 1903. In China in 1927 I helped see to it that
Standard Oil went on its way unmolested.
This shift also highlights the importance of understanding Gramsci's
concept of cultural hegemony and how it plays out in the real world.
By examining the focus of US domestic policy over the past century, we
can see how forms of 'security' can be dissected into two parts: those
focusing on the interests of the ruling-class minority, and those
focusing on the interests of the working-class majority.
An example of the latter, which can aptly be described as 'social
security', can be seen in the aftermath of the Great Depression and the
subsequent focus on working-class (social) security in the New
Deal.Neocleous points to the literature of the time to highlight this
culture rooted in social security :
The economist Abraham Epstein, for example, had published a book called
'Insecurity: A Challenge to America,' in which he spoke of 'the specter
of insecurity' as the bane of the worker's life under capitalism, while
Max Rubinow had been articulating demands for 'a complete structure of
security' in a book called 'The Quest for Security'.
A 2012 report issued by The Corner House provides a very clear and
useful differentiation between what is referred to as 'lower-case' and
'upper-case' security.
The first type, which they label as 'lower-case' (which Neocleous refers
to as 'social'), specifically applies to that of the working-class
majority. This type of security, which relates to us all, include 'the
mundane, plural protections of subsistence: holding the land you work
and depend on; having a roof over your head; being able to count on
clean water and regular seasons; knowing you can walk home without being
assaulted by thieves or marauders; getting a good enough price for your
crop to make ends meet; above all, knowing you have the right to the
wherewithal for survival'.
The second type of security, which they label as 'upper-case' (and which
Neocleous refers to as 'national'), applies specifically to the
capitalist class. 'This is the Security that matters particularly to
ruling elites: security of property and privilege, as well as access to
enough force to contain any gains made by, or to counter the resistance
of, the dispossessed or deprived.'
Actions taken under the umbrella of national security are done so for
two main reasons: to protect ruling-class interests, and to feed the
immensely profitable military-industrial complex. When major political
figures own personal financial stock in the arms industry, as they often
do in the US, these dual purposes go hand in hand. The fact that it has
developed so intensely within the global epicentre of capitalist power
(the US) is expected.
Karl Kautsky's 1914 essay on 'ultra-imperialism' described this
inevitable stage clearly, stating that, as capitalist governments, in
representing their profit sectors, were forced to seek out new
industrial zones, 'the sweet dream of international harmony (free trade)
quickly came to an end' because, 'as a rule, industrial zones overmaster
and dominate agrarian zones'.
Hence, the massive outgrowth of industrial capitalism, in its constant
search for new markets to exploit, can be accomplished only through
widespread shows of force and power. Once the ball is rolling, this
forceful expansion becomes a perpetual cycle through the opening of
markets, the manufacturing and deployment of massively destructive
armaments, and the rebuilding of markets.
In this process, the enormous loss of human life is viewed as a
necessary and acceptable sacrifice in light of the potential profit to
be made.
The final stage of capitalism, which has materialized over the course of
the last 50 years or so, confirms these power relations based in the
obsessive search for more profit. It is occupied by corporations that
'gobble down government expenditures, in essence taxpayer money, like
pigs at a trough', and are facilitated by a 'security' industry that is
funded 'with its official $612 billion defense authorization bill' that
contributes to 'real expenditures on national security expenses to over
$1 trillion a year' and 'has gotten the government this year (2015) to
commit to spending $348 billio n over the next decade to modernize our
nuclear weapons and build 12 new Ohio-class nuclear submarines,
estimated at $8 billion each'.
Ironically, by upholding upper-case Security, the working-class majority
undermines its own security. As upper-case Security strengthens so too
does our insecurity. Despite this, we remain active participants in
maintaining the highly militarized status quo.
Realizing the difference between 'lower-case' and 'upper-case' security
allows us to see how the interests of the ruling class can be inherited
by the working-class majority through the construction of an 'outside
threat' or common enemy:
Traditionally the business of lord or state, Security has always had an
uneasy, ambivalent relationship with the lower-case 'securities' of the
commons. The law was used to take people's land and subsistence away,
but it could also occasionally be mobilised in their defence. The lord
or the state's ability to make war was typically used against many of
the common people both at home and abroad, but could also enlist a
willing community to defend territory and livelihoods against common
enemies.
Today, outside threats and common enemies are constructed through
popular culture. Corporate news stations that are concerned only with
ratings (thus, profit) choose sensationalist narratives that strike fear
and shock in the viewer.
In this realm of profit-based 'news', there is no need for government
propaganda because corporate 'news' outlets fill this role through
sensationalism. The successful creation of foreign threats runs hand in
hand with the dominant narrative of safety that is centred in upper-case
Security.
It is also made possible through an intense conditioning of patriotism
to which every US citizen is subjected from an early age, where as
children we are forced to stand in formation in school classrooms with
our hands to our hearts, citing a pledge of allegiance in drone-like
fashion.
Children as young as five are made to participate in this ritual, with
absolutely no idea what they're saying, why they're saying it, and what
this odd pledge to a piece of cloth hanging in the corner means. As we
grow older, this forced allegiance is layered with vague notions of
pride and loyalty, all of which remain defined in the eyes of the
beholder, with virtually no substance.
The notion of American exceptionalism serves as the foundation for this
conditioning, and has roots in the cultural and religious practices of
the original European settler-colonists. 'It's there in the first
settlers' belief that they were conducting a special errand into the
wilderness to construct a city on a hill in the name of their heavenly
father', explains Ron Jacobs :
It is this belief that gave the Pilgrims their heavenly go-ahead to
murder Pequot women and children and it was this belief that gave
General Custer his approval to kill as many Sioux as he could. It made
the mass murder of Korean and Vietnamese civilians acceptable to the
soldiers at No Gun Ri and My Lai, and exonerated the officers who tried
to hide those and many other war crimes from the world. It [gave] George
Bush the only rationale he needed to continue his crusade against the
part of the world that stands in the way of the more mercenary men and
women behind his throne as they pursue their project for a new American
century.
This notion has motivated the ruling classes of the US (and
subsequently, the global capitalist order) to ride roughshod over the
world's people in order to establish a global hegemony conducive to
capitalist growth.
And it is this notion, often rooted in white-Christian supremacy, that
has given many working-class Americans a false sense of superiority over
the global population - whether labelled 'savages', 'uncivilized
heathens', 'filthy Communists', 'backwards Arabs', or 'Muslim
extremists'.
Because of its Eurocentric organization, the global capitalist onslaught
that has dominated the modern world has blatantly racial underpinnings.
The 'core nations' that have led this global hegemony (US, UK, France,
Germany) tend to be 'lighter' on the skin-colour scale, while the
'periphery nations' that make up its dominated group (primarily in the
global South) tend to be 'darker'.
This oppression based in white makes it easier for core-nation ruling
classes to justify their actions to their own. As world-systems theorist
Samir Amin tells us , for the peoples who live within periphery nations,
'colonization was (and is) atrocious. Like slavery, it was (and is) an
attack on fundamental rights', and its perpetuation is motivated by
material gain.
'If you want to understand why these rights were trampled on and why
they still are being trodden on in the world today', explains Amin, 'you
have to get rid of the idea that colonialism was the result of some sort
of conspiracy. What was at stake was the economic and social logic that
must be called by its real name: capitalism'.
In relation to the trajectory of imperialism, notions of American
exceptionalism and patriotism are almost always fronts for deeper
emotional calls to obey capitalism and white supremacy. These are
effective and powerful tools.
Most answer this call because, quite frankly, we are incapable of
comprehending the systemic exploitation that plagues us under
capitalism. It is difficult for many to understand that cheering for the
carpet-bombing of Arab and Muslim peoples worldwide, or publicly calling
for the mass killing of black protestors in places like Ferguson and
Baltimore, only strengthens the proverbial boot that crushes us in our
daily lives.
This inability to understand is rooted in the aforementioned formal
education system that prioritizes obedience over enquiry, with the
ultimate goal of obstructing any degree of class consciousness from
forming among American citizens.
For working-class kids in the US, this 'manufactured consent' doubles
down on the existing desperation that materializes through a forced
dependence on wage labour. Jobs and income are needed to sustain us, but
often these do not exist. In the US, unemployment, a staple of
capitalism, consistently fluctuates between 4% and 8%.
Underemployment, or the lack of jobs that provide a living wage, plagues
another 25-30% of the population, with some estimates as high as 40% in
the age of neoliberalism and globalization, where many former unionized,
'middle-class' jobs have been sent overseas. The poverty rate, as
defined by the government, consistently rests between 13% and 15% of the
US population. As of 2015, 15.8 million households (42.2 million
Americans) suffer food insecurity.
Because of this bleak economic landscape, many in the US are forced to
consider military enlistment. My own entry into military service, for
which I served four years in the US Army, was strongly influenced by a
lack of options. With college appearing too costly, the job market
appearing too scarce, and with few resources to explore life as an
adult, it was a relatively easy decision despite the severity that it
posed.
Choosing an unknown future where I could find myself anywhere in the
world, fighting whichever enemy my government chooses, and ultimately
risking my life and well-being was, I concluded, a better option than
wandering aimlessly into a world where my basic needs were not
guaranteed, and where jobs, living wages, and affordable housing were
scarce.
During my time in basic military training, I recall each soldier being
asked why they enlisted. The most common answers were, 'because I needed
a job' or 'I need money for college'.
My personal experience is confirmed by a 2015 field study conducted by
Brad Thomson for the Institute of Anarchist Studies, where a series
interviews with veterans concluded that 'a significant common thread is
that they came from working-class backgrounds and overwhelmingly named
financial reasons as their motivation to enlist'.
As one veteran, Crystal Colon, said: 'Most of them [recruits] are people
that just want money for college, or medical care, or have a family and
need money.'
Another veteran, Seth Manzel, sacrificed personal beliefs in order to
satisfy material needs, saying: 'I was aware of the war in Afghanistan -
it seemed misguided but I was willing to go. I heard the drums beating
for Iraq. We hadn't invaded yet but it was pretty clear that we were
going to. I was opposed to the idea, but again I didn't really have a
lot of options as far as skills that could transfer to other jobs.'
In the face of material desperation, the addition of spiritual and
emotional calls to duty becomes even more effective. As one interviewee
recalled: 'When I joined, in all honesty, I was very, well, that way I
would put it now is indoctrinated… your thinking is that this is your
country, you're giving back, it harkens on those strings, and then
there's the pragmatic side - how am I going to pay for college? I've got
these problems, my family didn't plan well, financially, so I've gotta
take care of my own, and how am I going to do that?' For me, the calls
to duty were firmly planted through the repetitive ritual of pledging
allegiance.
And, growing up in the 1980s, Hollywood had no shortage of blockbusters
that glorified war and military service. From Red Dawn to Rambo to Top
Gun, working-class kids like myself were (and continue to be) inundated
with films that delivered passionate and emotional calls to serve.
It is no coincidence that US military recruiters strategically seek out
economically marginalized populations to fill their ranks - which
explains why the ranks are disproportionately Black, Latino, poor, and
working class.
This modern practice reflects historical precedence. During the Vietnam
War, African Americans and poor whites were drafted at much higher rates
than their middle-class counterparts, leading to numerous allegations
that 'blacks and the poor were intentionally used as cannon fodder'.
Today, African Americans represent 20% of the military population, but
only 13% of the general population. In contrast, Whites make up about
60% of the military ranks, despite representing 78% of the general
population. Only 7% of all enlistees hold a Bachelor's degree. Nearly
30% of military recruits in 2008 did not possess a high-school diploma,
a large proportion of whom came from families with incomes of less than
$40,000 a year.
The military (all branches combined) spends roughly $1 billion per year
on advertising, which is specifically designed to pull at these
emotional strings. The content of these ads, along with recruitment
promises, are largely misleading. The money for college, whether through
the GI Bill or the College Fund, is overestimated; the supposed job
skills that can transfer to the civilian sector are almost always
non-existent; and the compensation itself, which is skewed by 'housing'
and 'meal' adjustments, is drastically overvalued.
During my time in service, it wasn't unusual to see soldiers using
public assistance programmes and receiving Article-15 punishment for
writing bad cheques in order to buy groceries.
At each of my duty stations - Ft. Jackson (South Carolina), Ft. Sill
(Oklahoma), and Ft. Campbell (Kentucky) - pawnbrokers and cheque-cashing
establishments were strategically positioned nearby, ready to exploit
the many soldiers who needed their services. My last two years in
service were sustained by using cheque-cashing services that charged up
to 40% interest on advancing money one or two weeks ahead. For me, as
for many, this was a necessary evil to sustain any semblance of a
reasonable standard of living.
Under capitalism, the working-class majority constantly finds itself in
a paradoxical state. Our entire lives are dominated by activities that
directly benefit those who own the houses we live in, control the
production of the commodities we buy, and own the businesses we work
for. Our participation in these activities both strengthens those owners
while also further alienating us from what would otherwise be productive
and creative lives. Our activities increase the owners' social and
political capital while at the same time separating us from our own
families and communities.
This soul-sapping existence takes on a more severe form when we are
called upon to fight and die in wars that, once again, only benefit
these owners.
In our social capacities, we are conditioned to follow the status quo,
despite its propensity to subject many of us to authoritative and
militaristic avenues. The vague notion of patriotism ironically leaves
us vulnerable to direct repression from our own government. For those
who run our worlds, the use of the term 'patriot' in the Patriot Act was
not arbitrary, just as the decision to replace 'defense' with 'security'
in official policy discussions was not.
This play on words is very effective to an already dumbed-down
population. And the cognitive dissonance it creates is blatant - while
over 80% of Americans do not believe the government represents our
interests, most of us go along with the authoritative policies stemming
from this same government, as long as they're labelled patriotic or
presented as being designed to keep 'the Other' in check.
Even blind faith in a Constitution that was written 229 years ago by
wealthy elite landowners (many of whom were also slave-owners)
strengthens this method of control, for it creates another vague form of
Americanism that can be used for coercive means.
Just as patriotism is a naturally vague notion, so too are our
respective ideas of freedom, liberty, justice, loyalty, and service to
our country. So, when called upon to give our lives for the 'greater
good', 'for God and country', for 'defense of the homeland', or 'for
freedom', working-class Americans volunteer en masse, without question,
are slaughtered and maimed en masse, and remain socially and
economically disenfranchised en masse, despite our 'service'.
Capitalism's tendency toward mass dependence on wage labour (and, thus,
widespread desperation) serves the military-industrial complex well. The
politicians who facilitate the system know this, and actively seek to
maintain this advantageous breeding ground. Arizona Senator John
McCain's off-hand comments during his 2008 presidential campaign,
warning about the dangers of 'making veterans' benefits so good that
nobody will stay in service', alluded to this fact.
When tens of millions of working-class kids are faced with the dire
options of McDonald's or the military, or perhaps college followed by
impotent job markets and lifelong student-loan debt, the coercive nature
of military recruitment tends to set in.
So, we join en masse, travel the world in metal machines, kill
impoverished people whom we've never met, fight, get maimed, sometimes
die… and return home still broke, living paycheque-to-paycheque, with
inadequate benefits and medical care, struggling to support our families
and keep our heads above proverbial water. All the while, arms
manufacturers enjoy skyrocketing stock prices and unfathomable profits.
And the American military machine keeps churning, spitting us all out in
its tracks.