Neoliberal Capitalism Isn't Supported By The Financial Right-But By The Societal Left

Since the end of the Second World War, the increased presence of mass media supported the promotion of the cultural elite doctrine.

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In Europe, the Marshall Plan was launched to prevent a communist takeover and allowed the importation of American mass culture. And with the social movements of the late ’60s, the codes and morals changed under the influence of the bourgeois new left.

Under the guise of democratization of the culture, the abandonment of the legitimate culture (perceived as oppressive) facilitated the implementation of mass culture as substitution i.e. a culture of uniformed and standardized products formatted by private companies. 

As such, the genuine popular culture, which stems from the popular classes, autonomous and independent of the ideological domination of the bourgeoisie, gave way to a global pop culture prefabricated by multinationals, aimed at the masses whose purpose is to manufacture public opinion and promote conformist positions.

For instance, folk music, a popular expression originating from regional or national particularities, has been supplanted by pop music, a mercantile product that has superseded the activities, practices, and beliefs deriving from genuine human interactions.

The Italian Poet and filmmaker Pier Paolo Pasolini (1922–1975) in Corsair Writings (Scritti corsari) published in 1975, commentated that the acculturation and standardization that Italian fascism failed to implement, were successfully enforced by the “consumer society”.

As such, for Pasolini, fascism as experienced under Mussolini is archaic. The destruction of popular cultures and particularisms, the withdrawal of substances from diverse ways of life, and the imposition of new cultural models that turned people into masses is true fascism.

From the ashes of authentic cultures (singularities of modes of production connected to tradition) raised the mass culture, easy and cheap to reproduce, manufactured in large numbers, with no communal connection.

Mass culture and mass consumption have also undermined sincere revolutionary countercultures. They have appropriated the emancipation movements, institutionalized protests, made them vain, and changed their nature. 

The cultural revolution carried by the intellectual libertarian bourgeoisie (Homo consumericus libertarian) imposed cultural codes sold as a model of liberation that are actually the cultural codes of neo-capitalism, the model for its permissive and hedonistic market (entertainment, fashion, leisure, etc.).

What passes off as emancipatory and transgressive is only submission to a bourgeois cultural paradigm. For example, the movement punk was stripped from its original alternative spirit by the fashion industry, so only uniform and standardized products remained (e.g. Vivienne Westwood was celebrated as a punk icon by the capitalist multinationals).

Besides, through advertising, neo-capitalism pretends to side with the oppressed and encourages unethical consumption promoting a revolutionary act and emancipation. However, if the model of consumption sold by the libertarian–liberalism ideology liberates from the old world values ​​deemed archaic, it only subjugates to new values ​​supported by large industrial companies.

For instance, Edward Bernays (1891–1995), the father of public relations and nephew of Sigmund Freud, exploited women’s desire for feminist emancipation to sell cigarettes. He applied his uncle's theory of psychoanalysis to enter the consumer subconscious.

Bernays devised a strategy to tie commodity with identity and symbolism (access to social statute and power). In 1929, in an effort to promote female smoking, a taboo at that time, he organized during the New York Easter parade for a group of women to smoke in front of journalists and claimed they were lighting the “Torches of Freedom” to contest masculine domination.

The event was relayed all over the world by the press and hardly a year after branding cigarettes as feminist “Torches of Freedom”, smoking had become acceptable and dramatically increased among women.

Bernays believed that a product could be linked to an idea that could convert into movement. Henceforth, brands often relate to social causes to sell their goods (e.g. Pepsi with Black Lives Matter). 

However, in order for the product to gain those characteristics, the mode of production must be hidden. The consumption can only be promoted as a revolutionary act if the producers are relegated to oblivion. It is a model of consumption without production, the obliteration of the workers’ condition.

In the ’90s, Nike started to advertise their women’s shoes as a symbol of empowerment and feminism. The “Sweatshop Scandal” revealed salaries below-minimum wages, child labor and appalling situation for overseas workers, specifically women in Indonesian factories.

The worker/producer is erased in favor of the enjoyment of the consumer. The working class is made invisible, forced to exile in peri-urban or rural areas due to gentrification, and replaced by a generalized wage-earning population and its mass culture.

Mass consumption creates a cultural desert where everything is a mirage. As per the words of French philosopher Guy Debord in his critique of contemporary consumer culture “The Society of the Spectacle” published in 1967: “In societies where modern conditions of production prevail, all of life presents itself as an immense accumulation of spectacles”.

The spectacle for Debord is a social relationship between people mediated by images. Our societies are obsessed with appearances over truth and experience. The spectacle conceals reality under those images. It becomes our consciousness.

From the conspicuous consumption of commodities, Homo consumericus libertarian wallowed in the conspicuous consumption of images. Satisfaction and fulfillment are not found simply in the “having” anymore but the “appearing”. 

The libertarian culture has imposed a new reality made of fraudulent pretense. A product is not bought for its functionality but for the image, appearance, or lifestyle that it denotes (hence the increased use of celebrities in advertisements). Similarly, politicians “sell” appearances rather than policies to their constituency.

As such, the fabric of our identities is cultivated through images manufactured and distributed by the culture industry. Our representation of happiness, friendship, and love … are all molded by mass media. 

Mass culture and its spectacle transformed genuine revolutionary counterculture into falsely subversive marginality framed, promoted, and relayed by consensual media. The class war for instance became a consumable class war (capitalist businesses selling Che Guevaras) and the stereotypes of young rebels (James Dean) mass-marketed as interchangeable manufactured goods (jeans and leather jackets).

Mass culture and its spectacle are also the illusion of individuality, the illusion of a choice hidden behind the standardization of cultural genres categorized by strict specifications (movies with the same narrative frameworks). Commodities advertised as decisive singularities are mass-produced and adapted to particular markets and their demands. Mass consumption is celebrated as a form of culture in its own right with its own imagination and specific conventions, however, it is the illusion of multiculturalism. The illusion of permissiveness.

In conclusion, the new left theorized that emancipation from traditional structures (religion, nation, family…) would liberate the oppressed classes. However, the void left by the abandonment of the legitimate culture has paved the way for a cultural “reconstruction” through the standardized commodity shaped by multinational capitalist companies. 

With mass culture, the bourgeoisie imposed its tastes on the working class and prevented the emergence of a truly popular culture (emanating directly from the people). The deconstruction of Western values and abandonment of the legitimate culture only liberated the libertarian consumer, the new revolutionary agent, from the moral norms. 

The rise and hegemony of neoliberal capitalism are no longer supported by the financial right but by the societal left.