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[Showerthought] does the bourgeoisie culturally exist? (lemmygrad.ml)

submitted 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) by Conselheiro@lemmygrad.ml to c/comradeship@lemmygrad.ml

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Throughout history, the dominant class usually create a very explicit cultural distinction between themselves and the exploited. Kings were divinely ordained and lived secluded in their courts, Roman senators had their privileges explicitly encoded into law, and colonial slavemasters relied on racism and religion to distinguish themselves from their slaves. They were explicitly and unashamedly metaphysically different kinds of people, with exclusive access to social markers like clothing.

Meanwhile the modern bourgeoisie seems to be almost reliant on propagating the myth that they're just like workers. Billionaires will go on talk shows to talk about their "job" as CEO, mostly dress just like the labour aristocracy, and even (ghost) write books on productivity or lifestyle as though they're human. Heck, some of them even have salaries! Culturally, they seem to always try to frame themselves as just a particularly successful regular Joe rather than a categorically different kind of person.

Am I crazy here or is the bourgeoisie historically unique in ideologically negating their own existence as a class? These statements seem too broad to be true.

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[–] FunkyStuff@hexbear.net 24 points 2 days ago (1 children)

I'm sleepy so I can't develop this answer too much, but I think there's actually a bit of an inversion of the cultural identity of the aristocrat among the masses as you mentioned, but it's also mixed with false consciousness that goes the other way around. The image of capitalists becomes more like that of workers, but the image of workers also undoubtedly becomes more aligned with the values of the capitalists. Everyone in TV and movies is rich by default. Economic success is self-realization for the masses. Everyone must be a leader and business owner. This is the cultural artifact of liberal universalism; where in feudalism each person has a definite role to play in society like organs in a body, capitalism builds a fiction in which everyone is free to be anyone, and everyone becomes the same person: a little servant of capital.

I think that there's something to how liberalism is universalist on paper that makes it historically exceptional. It's part of the reason why Marxism came into existence in the time and place that it did (even though it easily could've come about anywhere else too, in a different time). There really is a very powerful genie that liberalism has allowed out of the bottle in asserting that every human is equal, even if every implementation of actually existing capitalism puts a lot of asterisks on that assertion.

Also I think there's something that could be teased out about the contradiction between the real and the cultural product, where the cultural product depicts things as we stated, but the real experience doesn't match mass media at all. Maybe the delineation isn't in the content of the bourgeoisie's cultural image, but the medium in which it exists?

[–] haui@lemmygrad.ml 14 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) (1 children)

I think this is brillantly put.

My personal current headcanon is that i.e. musk and bezos are not bougeoisie but the courts jester.

Why is that? You might ask: the jester historically is not a king nor is he a typical peasant. He gets tp hang around the court in the warmth and wears clean clothes to not affront the king.

Todays newly rich billionaires are very powerful to us but the jester presumably was very powerful back then. If elon falls out of favor with old money, he might end up exposed like michael jackson did or how jeffrey eppstein did.

This is of course just an idea but i think the actual rulers of the world are not visible to us. The people who have not worked a day in two generations and who have not lived a day without a servant.

In my head, musk and bezos are gatsby. They are of course self oppressing but not out of will. They do this because of their material and historical circumstances. All other aristocracy is invisible to us.

[–] FunkyStuff@hexbear.net 4 points 2 days ago (2 children)

There's a pretty huge number of people who own enough shares of tech companies that rapidly exploded in value to never step foot in an office again. They literally do control what the CEO of the company does. But because of the distribution of individual interests among many people, it's ultimately best to think about capital itself being the force that a CEO responds to, because that's what the shareholders have and wish to increase.

[–] haui@lemmygrad.ml 3 points 2 days ago

Good point. Seeing the capital itself as a force to respond to is pretty convincing.

Still, money is not the main point here. The old money folks dont exist in a vacuum. If you took their money tomorrow, they would be back in money the day after because they built dynasties and networks of favors to call in over the decades or even generations. I dont think we know enough to really judge what their clubs and hidden communities even look like. Things like the rotary or lions club are the most visible and somewhat accessible if you are in the top earners of the working class (dont ask me how I know). I'm fairly certain there are clubs that you only get into if you are in completely different worlds, financially. I worked for a german private bank once (hauck & aufhäuser) which is famous for their investment banking scheme. Pretty sure they have special programs for their top customers to make them known to each other.

We would really benefit from a person like Engels who is both a capitalist and a marxist who spoils the secrets.

[–] haui@lemmygrad.ml 2 points 2 days ago

Good point. Seeing the capital itself as a force to respond to is pretty convincing.

We would really benefit from a person like Engels who is both a capitalist and a marxist who spoils the secrets.

[–] GreatSquare@lemmygrad.ml 22 points 2 days ago

Am I crazy here or is the bourgeoisie historically unique in ideologically negating their own existence as a class?

Byung Chul Han introduced the concept of self oppression in a couple of books. The idea being that the capitalist class doesn't need to enslave workers any more. Now that workers are encouraged to think of themselves as individual brands hustling against other individuals, they then push themselves to serve the capitalists. The workers don't need to be berated by the boss, they are enslaved by their own positivity.

CEOs are a form of celebrity worker to be emulated. They supposedly claim to live to work, making sacrifices for the job. Etc.

[–] PunkMonk@lemmygrad.ml 8 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago)

Could it be as simple as that the ultra wealthy want a culture war instead of a class war and so they blur the surface level cultural differences between the two primary classes in capitalist society? Or maybe it's a fascist thing, white unity rather than proletarian unity.