Today we hear allegations from politicians leading what is called the Free World that the public is being brainwashed by "radical Left ideology" (MTG), the usual hysterical chant of U.S. politicians, none of whom want to be tarred with an anti-capitalist brush.
But what about the thoroughly toxicating indoctrination of the population from birth through the media, starting with television, into the ideology of ruthless, dog-eat-dog capitalism under the guise of competitive individualist freedom? The best of all worlds. Such indoctrination amounts to inculcating, i.e. hammering in with the heel of a boot, a set of ideas that explains the world more or less crudely and deceptively. Under this ideology, each individual has the freedom to compete to earn income, to acquire property and, sweetest of all, the freedom to enjoy spending it on consumer goods and services. This consumption, in turn, realizes sales revenues for the capital advanced, from which profit is derived as a residue, once all costs have been deducted. Capital grown fatter with a surplus is then reinvested to grow by producing more and more stuff for diligent, eager consumers to consume.
The ugly blemish in this ideology is that the more or less fair, more or less bruising, more or less violent competition for income produces both winners and losers, and that, via the (at least nominally democratic) political struggle over state power, the winners, through their paid lobbyists, are able to rig the rules of play in both politics and the gainful game to ensure that they come out on top and hang on to their advantages, privileges, etc. And what are the rules of play? First and foremost, that the rights of private property be protected. How are these rights of dissociated private property exercised? For one, to enjoy the personal consumption afforded by spending income. For another, to invest acquired private property to generate more income, preferably untrammelled by the resistance of trade unions and environmental regulations, which drags down profits from their potential maximum. Hence the political lobbying to deregulate, i.e. to allow the gainful game to be played ruthlessly against people and the Earth without restraint.
The losers in the gainful game (and there are many of them) become resentful and blame others for their lack of income, their struggle to make ends meet. In their desperation they easily fall for a lying con man turned politician as a skilful demagogue to bring out the worst in them, who stokes their hatred and directs it against a suitable scapegoat (the immigrant, the other, the foreigner), manipulating them as clueless suckers. The masses in mass democracy are susceptible to manipulative disinformation through the mass media that, not merely fortuitously, turn out to be capitalist enterprises.
But even the winners don't know which god they are serving in viciously holding to what they've got and striving for ever more gain.
And private property itself as sociating form through which the gainful game is played? It is the deceptive camouflage for the endlessly valorizing Medium of thingified value that is covered up precisely by the ideology of competitive individualist freedom. Anyone daring to unmask this ruthless ideology is branded a "Left wing lunatic". But even those advocating a social-democratic softening of the ruthless rules of play of the gainful game, by protecting workers' rights to organize in trade unions or by mitigating environmental destruction are branded "Left wing lunatics", "Socialists" and "Marxists" by the willing, fervent, albeit unwitting, agents of the endlessly valorizing Medium; it has toxicated and intoxicated their souls.
And millions of indoctrinated voters, who have fallen for the ideology of unfettered individualist freedom and all it stands for, go along with this, even though they are losers in the gainful game. Demanding merely crumbs from the table, consisting of affordable groceries and cheap gasoline, they are what you call suckers, about whom W.C. Fields said: "Never give a sucker an even break." (1941) To be sure, never has the deep truth of this cynical saying, with some thought, been more obscenely visible than today. It's a pity that no one is looking deeper, including even those critical ones who are purportedly "rethinking capitalism"*).
And the 'free world'? It is becoming even freer. How so? Because the invisible global law of movement is that the Medium of thingified value must endlessly valorize, grow. On the surface of society, this law is accepted as the inevitability and necessity of unceasing economic growth. No one knows anything of the Medium. The secret slogan is: the freer the movement of valorizing thingified value, the freer the world. And that is exactly what so-called conservatives, albeit unknowingly, but nevertheless pitilessly, promote and cling onto. Do they or the duped masses have an inkling that the valorization principle is antithetical to life? What would happen if, despite all savage resistance, the life-negating principle of global movement that rules in our age came clearly to light?
*) Annual theme for 2025 at The New Institute in Hamburg (accessed 27 March 2025).
Further reading: 'An Invisible Global Social Value' TT&S Vol. 5 no. 2, 2024.
Capitalocene & The global law of movement.
Tale of the Qua: A Philosophical Comedy.
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