Marx asserts that social mechanisms emerge in class society that systematically create distortions, errors, and blind spots in the consciousness of the underclass. Members of a subordinate class (workers, peasants, serfs) suffer from false consciousness in that their mental representations of the social relations around them systematically conceal or obscure the realities of subordination, exploitation, and domination those relations embody. According to Daniel Little, Chancellor Emeritus and Professor of Philosophy at University of Michigan-Dearborn, “false consciousness” is a concept derived from Marxist theory of social class. At the risk of quoting a politically controversial philosophical concept, let me mention a term used for this phenomenon: false consciousness. The kind and gentle feudal lords reinforced the myth. Why didn’t the majority of serfs overthrow the minority of feudal lords? A huge myth was created to generate a belief that this system was just. For centuries, European serfs accepted a feudal system in which they were second-class citizens (if not slaves) in a system dominated by feudal lords. We also have to venture into politically controversial territory to understand the obstacles to change. Why not? What are the obstacles to change? And, if there are obstacles, why hasn’t the world’s freest media, the American media, revealed these obstacles? This is where the story becomes complex. To create a level playing field, the system has to change.
There is a spreading recognition, on both sides of the ideological divide, that the system is broken, that the system has to change. Thus many millions of Americans, on the left and right, feel one thing in common: that the game is rigged against people like them. Giridharadas claims that the American people are beginning to “feel” that the system is unfair: These familiar figures amount to three and a half decades’ worth of wondrous, head-spinning change with zero impact on the average pay of 117 million Americans. For instance, the average pretax income of the top tenth of Americans has doubled since 1980, that of the top 1 percent has more than tripled, and that of the top 0.001 percent has risen more than sevenfold-even as the average pretax income of the bottom half of Americans has stayed almost precisely the same. When the fruits of change have fallen on the United States in recent decades, the very fortunate have basketed almost all of them. It takes in the raw material of innovations and produces broad human advancement. As he says:Ī successful society is a progress machine. Anand Giridharadas, a former New York Times columnist, has documented in great detail in his book Winners Take All (2018) how the dream of the American middle class has effectively evaporated. There is no shortage of data to drive home the point that there is no longer a level playing field in America.
This is the reverse of how meritocracy should work.” Writing in the Financial Times in June 2019, Edward Luce provides one statistic to drive home this point: “Studies show that an eighth grade child from a lower income bracket who achieves maths results in the top quarter is less likely to graduate than a kid in the upper income bracket scored in the bottom quarter. By contrast, the affluent elites run downhill as the playing field is tilted in their favor. Today, when working class or even middle class Americans have to compete with the affluent elites, they are not competing on a level playing field. So the first big question we need to address is this: is there a level playing field for the poor and rich? Most Americans believe that they have an equal opportunity to become billionaires.
This is also why there is no social resentment of billionaires in America. Many Americans believe that their economic and political systems create a level playing field in which the poor and disadvantaged can rise to the top. The term “level playing field” is absolutely critical here. Equally critically, in terms of the economy, society, and political system there is a level playing field where the working classes, middle classes, and affluent elites compete. What is the actual difference between a democracy and a plutocracy? In a democracy, the masses broadly determine their future. Let’s begin to answer this question from the very beginning.
Indeed, this question may well be the most existential question America has to address. You may follow him on Twitter the United States of America still a functioning democracy or has it become, for all practical purposes, a plutocracy? And why is this question important? It’s important because the answer to the question of whether America has a dark or shining future will depend on whether it’s a democracy or plutocracy. This essay contains excerpts from his latest book Has China Won? (2020). Kishore Mahbubani is a Distinguished Fellow at the Asia Research Institute of the National University of Singapore.
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