Page 72 - Šolsko polje, XXVIII, 2017, no. 3-4: Education and the American Dream, ed. Mitja Sardoč
P. 72
šolsko polje, letnik xxviii, številka 3–4
they camouflage their actions which, in essence, are really just a high tech
form of thievery, gangsterism and outlawry, but this must never be admit-
ted publicly. When you confront them directly, they indulge themselves
in expressions of shocked surprise. The goal of the transnational capital-
ist class is accumulation of capital, plain and simple. Now it is true, that
the United States government does have a system of checks and balances
that have prevented the country from descending into a political dictator-
ship in the sense of the term that we reserve for totalitarian regimes and
military juntas. But it is still a dictatorship –a dictatorship by the global
corporate elite. One of the most decorated U.S. soldiers in modern histo-
ry, Major General Smedley Butler of the U.S. Marine Corps, who served
in Honduras, Nicaragua, Mexico and Haiti (earning his Medals of Hon-
or in Mexico and Haiti and is one of only 19 persons to receive the Med-
al of Honor twice), retired in 1931 and then wrote: “I served in all com-
missioned ranks from second lieutenant to Major General. And during
that period I spent most of my time being a high-class muscle man for Big
Business, for Wall Street and for the bankers. In short, I was a racketeer
for capitalism. I suspected I was just part of the racket all the time. Now
I am sure of it.”
I always believed the goal of education should be the creation of crit-
ical citizenship, and to create class consciousness for class struggle, a strug-
gle to forever end classes, and a struggle that would bring about freely as-
sociated labor, and reciprocal relations of solidarity and social justice. This
is direct opposition to the role that the state has created for its citizens.
The last thing that democracy wants is a critical citizenry. It wants a con-
sumer citizenry, where intellectuals are reduced to metaspectators, and
measured by their ability to sift out difference rather than explain dia-
lectical contradictions. Capitalism views the emancipated, cosmopolitan
consumer citizen as free to make purchases at the shopping mall, which
is the true church of capitalism, and bears the stamp, as do most religious
institutions, of the coloniality of power, and we can see asymmetrical re-
lations of power and privilege at work throughout the globe—manifest-
ed in the global shopping mall—planet mall—which in some ways is sym-
bolic of the American Dream, of the ability to shop endlessly, to acquire
status through particular designer signatures and power, both social pow-
er and economic power. I’ve seen this form of both external and internal
colonization in countries all over the world where segregation is based on
somatic, economic and cultural characteristics—on the rifts and fissures
created in the cultural realm by social relations of production through-
out the broad expanse of what William Robinson calls the transnational
capitalist class. About a decade ago, I met Robinson, a sociologist at UC
70
they camouflage their actions which, in essence, are really just a high tech
form of thievery, gangsterism and outlawry, but this must never be admit-
ted publicly. When you confront them directly, they indulge themselves
in expressions of shocked surprise. The goal of the transnational capital-
ist class is accumulation of capital, plain and simple. Now it is true, that
the United States government does have a system of checks and balances
that have prevented the country from descending into a political dictator-
ship in the sense of the term that we reserve for totalitarian regimes and
military juntas. But it is still a dictatorship –a dictatorship by the global
corporate elite. One of the most decorated U.S. soldiers in modern histo-
ry, Major General Smedley Butler of the U.S. Marine Corps, who served
in Honduras, Nicaragua, Mexico and Haiti (earning his Medals of Hon-
or in Mexico and Haiti and is one of only 19 persons to receive the Med-
al of Honor twice), retired in 1931 and then wrote: “I served in all com-
missioned ranks from second lieutenant to Major General. And during
that period I spent most of my time being a high-class muscle man for Big
Business, for Wall Street and for the bankers. In short, I was a racketeer
for capitalism. I suspected I was just part of the racket all the time. Now
I am sure of it.”
I always believed the goal of education should be the creation of crit-
ical citizenship, and to create class consciousness for class struggle, a strug-
gle to forever end classes, and a struggle that would bring about freely as-
sociated labor, and reciprocal relations of solidarity and social justice. This
is direct opposition to the role that the state has created for its citizens.
The last thing that democracy wants is a critical citizenry. It wants a con-
sumer citizenry, where intellectuals are reduced to metaspectators, and
measured by their ability to sift out difference rather than explain dia-
lectical contradictions. Capitalism views the emancipated, cosmopolitan
consumer citizen as free to make purchases at the shopping mall, which
is the true church of capitalism, and bears the stamp, as do most religious
institutions, of the coloniality of power, and we can see asymmetrical re-
lations of power and privilege at work throughout the globe—manifest-
ed in the global shopping mall—planet mall—which in some ways is sym-
bolic of the American Dream, of the ability to shop endlessly, to acquire
status through particular designer signatures and power, both social pow-
er and economic power. I’ve seen this form of both external and internal
colonization in countries all over the world where segregation is based on
somatic, economic and cultural characteristics—on the rifts and fissures
created in the cultural realm by social relations of production through-
out the broad expanse of what William Robinson calls the transnational
capitalist class. About a decade ago, I met Robinson, a sociologist at UC
70
