Herewith another brief contribution. Last time I was looking at economic liberalism, now I shall look at civic liberalism and its self-image, and consider the reality in the pecking order of exploitation.
So Picture One is the self-image for an economic liberal. It defines authority, as regulating the market-place but not the market forces. Civic liberalism sees itself as confronting authority, asserting the rights of ‘Man’. Feminism might be regarded as an applied form, operating within a society it seeks to change, substituting ‘men’ for ‘authority’ and ‘women’ for ‘society’. In fact civic liberalism conflates limited resources, skills and expertise and the supply curve into ‘authority’ since it is not sensitive to the economy:
So Picture One is the self-image for an economic liberal. It defines authority, as regulating the market-place but not the market forces. Civic liberalism sees itself as confronting authority, asserting the rights of ‘Man’. Feminism might be regarded as an applied form, operating within a society it seeks to change, substituting ‘men’ for ‘authority’ and ‘women’ for ‘society’. In fact civic liberalism conflates limited resources, skills and expertise and the supply curve into ‘authority’ since it is not sensitive to the economy:
Now we see that far from confronting each other, they are intricately related, but have different skills, and different cultures, the latter, in yellow, not on the critical path of exploitation. The second diagram characterises people who I would call secondary exploiters.
Once again we have the grey, and the various freedoms are no longer white, and we see grey: the ignorance and fear of those they jointly exploit.
The culture of those exploited has a place in Marxist interpretation of culture. In particular the term subaltern was coined by the Italian Marxist Antonio Gramsci (subalterno in Italian). According to Wikipedia:
“In critical theory and post-colonialism, subaltern is the social group who are socially, politically, and geographically outside of the hegemonic power structure [my italics] of the colony and of the colonial homeland. In describing "history told from below", the term subaltern derived from the cultural hegemony work of Antonio Gramsci, which identified the social groups who are excluded from a society’s established structures for political representation, the means by which people have a voice in their society.”
However, in characterising exploitation as an economically-driven relationship between the cultures of exploiters and exploited, I am not focussing on social groups who are “geographically outside of the hegemonic power structure [again my italics] of the colony and of the colonial homeland.” I am talking about people within the hegemonic power structure.
For me it is the secondary exploiters who are partially if not totally outside the hegemonic power structure, though they depend on it. And it is this degree of cultural independence which looks like individual choice.
And the capitalism of the primary exploiters is still a cancer, which the hegemonic powers try to protect from its host. And the cancer still continues to move forward, like a drunken crab, conscious only of its very immediate surroundings.
Once again we have the grey, and the various freedoms are no longer white, and we see grey: the ignorance and fear of those they jointly exploit.
The culture of those exploited has a place in Marxist interpretation of culture. In particular the term subaltern was coined by the Italian Marxist Antonio Gramsci (subalterno in Italian). According to Wikipedia:
“In critical theory and post-colonialism, subaltern is the social group who are socially, politically, and geographically outside of the hegemonic power structure [my italics] of the colony and of the colonial homeland. In describing "history told from below", the term subaltern derived from the cultural hegemony work of Antonio Gramsci, which identified the social groups who are excluded from a society’s established structures for political representation, the means by which people have a voice in their society.”
However, in characterising exploitation as an economically-driven relationship between the cultures of exploiters and exploited, I am not focussing on social groups who are “geographically outside of the hegemonic power structure [again my italics] of the colony and of the colonial homeland.” I am talking about people within the hegemonic power structure.
For me it is the secondary exploiters who are partially if not totally outside the hegemonic power structure, though they depend on it. And it is this degree of cultural independence which looks like individual choice.
And the capitalism of the primary exploiters is still a cancer, which the hegemonic powers try to protect from its host. And the cancer still continues to move forward, like a drunken crab, conscious only of its very immediate surroundings.
Martin Prior
