Culture and Life

by Rob Gowland

Individualism

There are many words that describe the ideology of capitalism. However, 
the editor of this paper being a sensitive soul unused to coarse language, 
I will refrain from using any of them here.

A word I can use, however, is individualism. It pretty well sums up the 
intellectual, social and moral basis of capitalism and is much favoured by 
capitalists themselves.

However, individualism as a concept, with its implications of "look out for 
yourself and to hell with other people", does not go down well with most 
folk, accustomed as they are to thinking that selfishness is an undesirable 
trait while helping others is a good one.

Such are the bad vibes aroused by the word individualism that capitalism's 
own propagandists quickly learned to qualify it with a word carrying plenty 
of positive vibes: rugged.

"Rugged individualism" is lauded as having built the USA. The collective 
labour of millions of US workers is not even mentioned.

Nor is there much mention of the favourable economic conditions for US 
capital in the 20th century, especially the extremely favourable economic 
outcome of two world wars.

No, it's all the result of rugged individualism; doing your own thing, 
paying no heed to the herd or the mob, going ahead regardless of do-
gooders, tree-huggers, welfare junkies and interfering governments.

So what if there's an occasional Enron, World.Com, HIH etc? Or even a whole 
slew of them, as seems to be the case lately?

The important point to get across to the people is the importance of 
individualism. After all, how can you carry out a hostile takeover of 
another company, break it up, sell off its assets and put thousands out of 
work if you spend time thinking about the welfare of all those people?

Nor will you ever get rich if you let your workers develop a culture of 
(shudder) collectivism. It's all very well for a trio of individuals like 
the Three Musketeers to have the slogan "all for one and one for all", but 
a great mass organisation like a trade union? Uh huh. No way.

Unfortunately for capitalists, life itself tends to teach working people to 
rely on each other, that they do better together than they do on their own. 
Left to themselves, they tend to realise quite quickly that a large number 
of people labour to create the company's profits, but those profits are 
enjoyed by a small group of people, none of whom are to be found among the 
workers.

So capitalists go to great pains to persuade workers of the folly of 
collectivist thinking and the advantages — even the inevitability — of 
individualism. They do this by overtly denigrating socialism and covertly 
promoting individualism.

The overt denigration you're all well aware of: the likening of socialism 
to fascism, the promotion of those who "fled" it, the constant reiteration 
of its supposed failures — in the economy, in the environment, in 
technology, in space, in the Cold War, even in World War II.

When the Berlin Wall fell, I remember seeing an Australian TV discussion in 
which the panellists ruefully admitted that in fact socialism had had a lot 
going for it — they referred to ultra-low rents, free medical care, free 
education, guaranteed jobs, etc.

Today, by contrast, you would be extremely unlikely to find a TV journalist 
in this country who would countenance the idea that socialism had had any 
significant achievements.

The consigning of the achievements of the European socialist countries to 
the ashcan of history proceeds apace. The pundits of capitalism know that 
they do not have a great deal of time in which to bury socialism once and 
for all.

The global economy is heading towards a resounding crash, and they don't 
want a shocked populace to suddenly revive its interest in the socialist 
alternative.

The covert promotion of individualism is harder to see. Oh, some of it's 
obvious enough: all those movies and TV shows in which the situation (if 
not the whole world) is saved by the action of some rugged individual hero, 
for example.

Even when the hero is part of an organisation that is supposed to depend 
for its success on the application of teamwork, such as the police, the 
focus is on the "rugged individual" hero who achieves results by flouting 
the rules and working alone.

Then there is the near total absence of movies or TV shows about mass 
action: where are the movies about union struggles or the civil rights 
struggle (rather than the story of an individual)? There are stories galore 
that in any other context would be snapped up for telemovie cable channels 
Arena or Hallmark. But curiously, they are not.

Instead, the working class is dished up a diet of wish-fulfilment fantasies 
— romantic comedies, adventures, thrillers, sentimental "dramas" — and 
"reality" (including the confrontational talk shows) that cunningly combine 
the appeal of voyeurism and gossip.

To observe that encouraging voyeurism and gossip is not exactly cultured is 
to state the obvious. But keeping people broadly uneducated, and hence 
uncultured, is another way the ruling class keeps the workers from 
investigating such undesirables as alternative social systems.

If people are encouraged to inquire and to investigate, they might well 
apply their minds to their own situation, which would be a development that 
capitalism would prefer did not happen.

So instead, they are given pap — replete with grotesques, much shouting 
and every appearance of "drama" — but it is mere fooling about with 
symptoms not with causes.

The poor sods who appear on Jerry Springer and such shows, screaming at 
each other over weighty issues such as whether "my brother-in-law stole my 
father 's mistress" are, in their sad lives, victims of capitalism too.

But Jerry Springer and his ilk are there to divert the working class from 
the serious questions. When do these programs ever put up a quartet of 
steelworkers' wives with the topic: "My husband's employer stole our 
pension fund. What should we do?"

Boy, that'll be the day! Because capitalist media owners know that 
capitalism generally simply cannot have that sort of question debated as 
part of popular entertainment. That's not popular entertainment's role 
under capitalism.