Karl Marx sought a
revolution. He wanted workers, whom he
called proletarians, to rise up and overthrow their capitalistic bosses. Instead of passively allowing themselves to
be exploited, they needed to take control of the government and institute a
dictatorship of the proletariat in which fairness would prevail.
The trouble was that the
workers were not aware of their plight.
Rather than recognizing how badly they were being exploited, they tended
to identify with their employers. Many
actually accepted pay to serve in militaries and police forces dedicated to
defending the very people who were misusing them.
This had to stop. The workers had to become conscious of their
own interests. They needed to realize
that they constituted a social class to which they owed allegiance. Accordingly, someone was required to help
them pierce their false consciousness.
Someone, such as Marx, with an objective perspective, had to educate the
masses.
Fast-forward to today and
liberals continue to regard themselves as a social vanguard dedicated to waking
the working classes from their political slumber. In their view, workers must understand that the
“one percenters” are not their friends and hence that wealth must be
transferred from the top to the bottom of society.
Contemporary liberals are
not as militant as Marx, but they too intend to remake society. Obama called this “hope and change,” and its
cat’s paw is ObamaCare.
The difficulty with this
strategy is that today’s exploitation is primarily lodged in the public, rather
than the private, domain. It is now the
government that is controlling workers and limiting their options. It is a bloated governmental bureaucracy that
is standing in the way of prosperity and freedom.
Who now sets society’s
rules? Washington. Who collects the confiscatory taxes? Washington.
And who calls the tune in Washington?
The liberals. Consequently if
there is today a false consciousness, it is a lack of awareness of who is
exploiting whom.
Once capitalists sought to
convince their employees that they were on their side. Among other things, these bosses used
religion to pacify the proletarians and convince them they would get their just
deserts after they died and went to heaven.
Nowadays, it is the liberals
who are trying to convince voters they are on their side. Just you wait, they tell them, and ObamaCare
will provide everyone with quality medical care at lower costs. Just be patient and raising the minimum wage
will pull everyone out of poverty.
But don’t look behind the
curtain to see how much money we are wasting.
And don’t notice that we are funneling your tax dollars into the pockets
of our political cronies. And for
goodness sake, don’t realize that the rules we are instituting to protect you
from yourselves are actually intended to enhance our power.
The radical feminists, who
were gender Marxists, sought to arouse women to overthrow their male oppressors
by making women aware of how badly they were abused. One vehicle for doing so was “consciousness
raising” sessions in which the sins of men were enumerated in gory detail.
Political liberals, however,
favor use of the media and educational systems.
These routinely publicize the alleged transgressions of business
leaders, while whitewashing the deceits and power grabs of Democratic
politicians.
The object is to divert
attention away from the real oppressors.
We are thus to believe liberals when they tell us they care about our
welfare. We are instead to aim our indignation
at the Koch brothers for funding conservative causes. Who is actually helped and hurt does not
matter.
And so the poor continue to
be hurt. They are driven into a hopeless
dependency from which they may never emerge.
And the middle classes are hurt.
They are tied down with bureaucratic shackles that limit their
entrepreneurial aspirations.
As for the rich: they are
doing just fine—especially if they donate to liberal causes and are allowed to
feed at the federal trough.
Melvyn L. Fein, Ph.D.
Professor of Sociology
Kennesaw State University
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