Page 71 - Šolsko polje, XXVIII, 2017, no. 3-4: Education and the American Dream, ed. Mitja Sardoč
P. 71
p. mclaren ■ from a city on the hill to the dungheap of history
So in your view the idea of the American Dream is largely a myth in-
vented by an imperialist country?
I am sure that other countries have their version of the American Dream,
but because of the power of the U.S. culture/entertainment complex, the
idea has been imported to countries all over the world, and it has also been
imported through military intervention euphemistically referred to as
“humanitarian intervention”. Recall the famous phrase by Thomas Fried-
man in his book, The Lexus and the Olive Tree: “The hidden hand of the
market will never work without a hidden fist. McDonald’s cannot flourish
without McDonnell Douglas… And the hidden fist that keeps the world
safe for Silicon Valley’s technologies to flourish is called the U.S. Army,
Air Force, Navy and Marine Corps.” Tragically, I have learned in my trav-
els to Mexico, Colombia, and other South American countries that young
people who see little or no hope in achieving the financial security and
happiness that is associated with The American Dream can find it only
through crime, and many young people today dream of growing up and
joining the narco cartels. Some of my students in Instituto McLaren de
Pedagogia Critica in Mexico, have documented this. This is very true in
the United States as well. The great crime families in the U.S. were very
much living The American Dream. The Godfather movies which were so
popular were very much an illustration of how to achieve The American
Dream. The Corleone family in the movies represent the real “First Fam-
ily” of the United States, as much so as Donald Trump, his wife and sons.
Al Capone, the notorious criminal of 1920s Chicago, was aggressively an-
ti-communist, because he feared it would be more difficult for crime syn-
dicates to achieve The American Dream under communist rule. As an ob-
jective reality, the American Dream has already been discredited and in its
essential features erased by the development of the transnational capital-
ist class and by what David Harvey calls “accumulation by dispossession”
where those in the global command centers of financial power centralize
wealth in the hands of a few. And they do this basically by robbing the
public of their wealth, their landholdings, whatever they can accumulate.
Now how different is this from organized crime? Banks are considered
“too big too fail” and receive bailouts, and the American taxpayer pays
for it. But the government failed to come to their rescue when the mort-
gage companies came to dispossess them of their homes during the Great
Recession of 2008. When corporate leaders and politicians and crime or-
ganizations condemn socialism, they do so because they realize that un-
der real existing socialism they will no longer be able to accumulate all
the spoils (surplus value) that a free market capitalism affords them. Here,
69
So in your view the idea of the American Dream is largely a myth in-
vented by an imperialist country?
I am sure that other countries have their version of the American Dream,
but because of the power of the U.S. culture/entertainment complex, the
idea has been imported to countries all over the world, and it has also been
imported through military intervention euphemistically referred to as
“humanitarian intervention”. Recall the famous phrase by Thomas Fried-
man in his book, The Lexus and the Olive Tree: “The hidden hand of the
market will never work without a hidden fist. McDonald’s cannot flourish
without McDonnell Douglas… And the hidden fist that keeps the world
safe for Silicon Valley’s technologies to flourish is called the U.S. Army,
Air Force, Navy and Marine Corps.” Tragically, I have learned in my trav-
els to Mexico, Colombia, and other South American countries that young
people who see little or no hope in achieving the financial security and
happiness that is associated with The American Dream can find it only
through crime, and many young people today dream of growing up and
joining the narco cartels. Some of my students in Instituto McLaren de
Pedagogia Critica in Mexico, have documented this. This is very true in
the United States as well. The great crime families in the U.S. were very
much living The American Dream. The Godfather movies which were so
popular were very much an illustration of how to achieve The American
Dream. The Corleone family in the movies represent the real “First Fam-
ily” of the United States, as much so as Donald Trump, his wife and sons.
Al Capone, the notorious criminal of 1920s Chicago, was aggressively an-
ti-communist, because he feared it would be more difficult for crime syn-
dicates to achieve The American Dream under communist rule. As an ob-
jective reality, the American Dream has already been discredited and in its
essential features erased by the development of the transnational capital-
ist class and by what David Harvey calls “accumulation by dispossession”
where those in the global command centers of financial power centralize
wealth in the hands of a few. And they do this basically by robbing the
public of their wealth, their landholdings, whatever they can accumulate.
Now how different is this from organized crime? Banks are considered
“too big too fail” and receive bailouts, and the American taxpayer pays
for it. But the government failed to come to their rescue when the mort-
gage companies came to dispossess them of their homes during the Great
Recession of 2008. When corporate leaders and politicians and crime or-
ganizations condemn socialism, they do so because they realize that un-
der real existing socialism they will no longer be able to accumulate all
the spoils (surplus value) that a free market capitalism affords them. Here,
69
