Affluenza and Half-Hearted Demands for Socio-Economic Equality
When he said, “Sometimes I feel like I should go back to being a public defender and that I should get rid of my Rolex…” my gag reflex turned on not just because this statement disgusts me as I personally can neither choose to move from one job within or across career fields knowing with certainty that I will have a job (and therefore an income) nor afford a Rolex, but moveover because dude was just earlier in the week going on about how his rate of $250 an hour was really not enough for the bullshit his legal clients subjected him to.
But he’s a registered Democratic Socialist, so he’s clearly woke. I like using the word “woke” to describe people who use the term to mock (moderate) Liberals (Democrats). Slang for “awake,” “woke” has been used for the past decade in reference to social awareness–as something hidden in the ideology that becomes clear through experience and (re)education (1). I especially enjoy co-opting this term for the fact that a favorite in the Democratic-Socialist lexicon is the term “woke capitalism”–the good form of Conscious Capitalism, ala Whole Foods’ John Mackey, that will save the world, which all enlightened Democratic-Socialists recognize as a farce.
However, my assessment is that Democratic-Socialists are, by-in-large, if not woke capitalists than woke consumers. Raised in the socio-economic climate of (advanced) capitalism, any Democratic-Socialist attempt social change thus far and projected for the foreseeable future, including the promotion of socio-economic equality, always-already defers to the market as the catalyst for change. The age old notion that citizens as consumers vote with their dollars– that the way to a better world is through bettering the market–remains. There is, what seems to me, a cognitive gap between the logic that we will create a better market and we will arrive at socio-economic equality. As the heart of capitalism, the market is necessarily productive of inequality. You cannot participate in the market and truly claim you want to see a socialist future (at least not within your time on the planet) because market participation necessarily advocates for the continuation of capitalism– however kinder or more fair–and as long as capitalism is in situ true equality is impossible. True equality is an ideal or a goal that is constantly pushed forward to some future when people are ready to resign consumer comforts that are in fact afforded by inequality. Remember that episode of South Park with the underpants gnomes? Step 1: collect underpants, step 2: ???, and step 3: profit (2). There’s that missing piece of how to get from here to there. We know what we have, we know what we want, but how do we turn what we have into what we want without actually doing anything at all? OR, more accurately, how do we come to terms with the fact that what we have isn’t worth shit and we need to just start over?
We can’t just change what we buy or who we buy it from. It’s not that easy. You will never, EVER, buy anything that facilitates equality, including a Bernie Sanders T-Shirt that takes longer to arrive than the relationship with whom you ordered the shirt for. If you pay for a thing–a thing that others don’t already-always have access to or if the thing you buy costs more or less than another thing, there is inequality. Things are unequal, people are unequal, and we’re all measured in relation to a thing that in reality means nothing–money–the general equivalent. Democratic-Socialism in which one stops buying Vans Shoes because the company pulled a design inspired by pro-democracy (anti-China) protests in Hong Kong (implicitly indicative that the company is trying to put the kibosh on democracy) is not going to lead to socialism (3). It will lead one company to profit while the profits of another’s wanes. Making your own shoes out of recycled materials or bartering shoes with someone with these skills would be the best way to go. But who the fuck wants to be a cobbler? Probably not the tattoo artist who now wears Keds or the maybe-I-might-should-return-to-public-defense lawyer with a Rolex.
But this is really the essence of wokeness. This is the recognition of an inefficient, nay detrimental ideology, and yet complacency to it when done according to certain perimeters, is illustrative Zizek’s revision of Marx’s claim, “They do not know it, but they are doing it,” for the current state of capitalism: “They know very well what they are doing, but still, they are doing it.” For Marx, ideology functions as a mask to what is actually going on to keep people consenting, docile bodies that contribute to their own misery. For Zizek, following the lead of Peter Sloterdijk, ideology is viewed with cynicism in contemporary society–we know the truth ideology attempts to disguise (4). Though exceedingly thin if not transparent, ideology remains in place and necessary as a facade that guides peoples’ (in)action and adherence to capital means of production and consumption, and by that, the social and economic hierarchies and stratifications that are required in its maintenance. Ideology becomes the thing that justifies the way we are–it is binding and according to the cynical formulation something that we cannot escape with wokeness, irony, or straight up resent. I would argue instead that wokeness simply reifies ideology by proving that with knowledge we can bypass or cover up ideology instead of getting rid of it. We can set up an oppositional camp next to it, acting as a resentful neighbor that still wants to take part in the blackparty (or freeload off your unprotected wi-fi).
That’s most or least interesting part of the self-identified Democratic-Socialists I meet. They come off as privileged, if not entitled. And when they digress into what irks them about these “woke capitalists” its that those people are so entitled–entitled to self-righteousness, entitled to exploit the working class locally and globally in the name of job creation, entitled to pride themselves for the charities they give to or have created to ensure basic necessities and/or care for others while they own huge mansions and Rolex watches. That these “woke capitalists” were born into fame, status, wealth, given trust funds and mansions, and supplied with the best education. They didn’t really earn any of it at all, so how can they judge other people or treat others as needing or looking for handouts? Can’t they see they are the reason that those people need handouts? Because their evil companies and charities (re)create socio-economic stratification?
Not like being a lawyer. Or being a tattoo artist. Or being a Cultural Studies scholar. Those are positions with no social or economic implications that anyone could achieve with absolutely no capital resources or familial support (even at the emotional level).
But if you have support, you don’t necessarily see how those conditions have contributed to your view of the world, including your ideas about what it would look like if everyone were equal. This is to say, while you may fully recognize that you have an iPhone and other people don’t–or that you have an iPhone10 and Allison only has an iPhoneSE–you probably not have fully considered what it would mean if everyone were afforded the same things, or if you tried it was likely with good intentions thereby lacking any tangible/material, productive/social realities. Would everyone have an iPhone? And if so, what model would it be? Would there be any alternatives? What if for some reason, I wanted a Sony phone? And who would make these phones of one or different brands? This gets exceedingly complicated when you try to remove an economic system that has come to structure every facet of our lives. This is not to say I need the choice of phones or that I need a phone at all. It is to say that I cannot imagine a world in which I didn’t have to do a cost benefit analysis of what phone to purchase based on my current “needs” and finances, as well as the model that fits most closely in line with my socialization and the way I want to be recognized socially, as most, if not all, consumer goods signify socially–specifically that $25 Bernie Sanders T-shirt, which says, “Hey, look at me, I bought this overpriced T-shirt to support a cause, which shows I care about things and have the money to do so. I bought this T-shirt so that one day we can be equal. You’re welcome.”
I’m not saying we shouldn’t try to make things better, fairer, more tolerable, kinder, and whatnot. The problem is that championing a Democratic-Socialist ideology is just an attempt to supplant one ideology with another instead of addressing the actual problems that ideology emerges from and attempts to abate. In this, a “new” ideology doesn’t get rid of the actual problems the existing ideology obscures, it simply changes the curtain. Contrary to the claims of their political and economic opposition, Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) assert that Democratic-Socialism does not mean “an all-powerful government bureaucracy” that holds power over all decision making, resources, and means of production but that “workers and consumers who are affected by economic institutions should own and control them” with the consideration that “large concentrations of capital in industries such as energy and steel may necessitate some form of state ownership” (5). This is to say, in this vision of Democratic-Socialism, private ownership still exists, it is just ownership by a group that is invested at a more tangible/practical level, where their work and livelihood are directly related to their product, instead of ownership by a few capitalist overseers, who profit off of the work and produce of others. So, there is still profit when the thing is exchanged on the market and, as such, there is still competition, which means that workers are still competing against one another because more could always be earned to be divided amongst the group, making the group better off as a whole. In Democratic-Socialism we have all the same things–everything is the same–except that workers are better off because they are more autonomous and profit more directly. But really, as their success, satisfaction, and happiness are still attached to the value of their labor as they now labor for themselves, nothing has really changed, except for the fact that the non-laboring, overseeing, exploitative capitalist class has to work to sustain themselves.
And then the argument is made that all that accumulated wealth–those billions of Bazos bucks and the like–will be dispersed amongst those who have actually earned them when corporations become collectivized. But how? How do we decide who gets what? How do we decide who gets to pursue their passions and who has to make the iPhones? And here we are left with another underpants gnomes scenario. According to DSA:
People enjoy their work if it is meaningful and enhances their lives. They work out of a sense of responsibility to their community and society. Although a long-term goal of socialism is to eliminate all but the most enjoyable kinds of labor, we recognize that unappealing jobs will long remain. These tasks would be spread among as many people as possible rather than distributed on the basis of class, race, ethnicity, or gender, as they are under capitalism. And this undesirable work should be among the best, not the least, rewarded work within the economy. For now, the burden should be placed on the employer to make work desirable by raising wages, offering benefits and improving the work environment. In short, we believe that a combination of social, economic, and moral incentives will motivate people to work (6).
“Unappealing jobs will long remain” but we could spread these tasks? So, the lawyer who feels obligated to be a public defender, but not enough to actually do so, will now not only do that but also, perhaps, spend his weekends laboring in the iPhone factory…? There are for this DSA-registered legal avenger, moral and social incentives to contribute to the cause either via public defense or actual manual labor but the economic advantage he already has outweighs those things. Remember, $250 an hour is not enough for the struggle he has to deal with. He’ll probably just stick with what he’s doing as he pontificates on the attainment of a Socailist-Democracy, which works because it is an inactive, inefficient contribution to an ideological cause. And even if in the end somehow a more socialistic model were achieved, he’ll still be a-OK because though he doesn’t make what he thinks his labor (if we can even call it that) is worth, he can afford to pay a bit extra for this or that to ensure the underlings are better compensated and it’s morally right for him to do so. He gets to feel better by making a very small contribution… Wait, how is this different than Conscious “woke” Capitalism?
This is the image I want to paint when I say “affluenza and half-hearted attempts at socio-economic equality.” A desire to have absolutely nothing change for you because you have it pretty damn good but to feel less badly that you have as much as you do when others have so little. You want others to have a bit more so you can feel ok about still having, just slightly less, more. You don’t see that others are struggling and don’t just want to get by, but want what you have. They want to actually be equal to you according to the socio-economic reality that exists at present.
But affluenza is a disease in as much as it is a defense. According to our friends at Merriam-Webster, affluenza can be defined in two ways. First, as “the unhealthy and unwelcome psychological and social effects of affluence regarded especially as a widespread societal problem: such as feelings of guilt, lack of motivation, and social isolation experienced by wealthy people,” and second, following the explanation of John de Graaf, David Wann, and Thomas H. Naylor in their book by the same name, affluenza as “a painful, contagious, socially transmitted condition of overload, debt, anxiety, and waste resulting from the dogged pursuit of more” (7). With affluence or the desire for affluence as something that is simply and naturally part of social reality–that some people are predisposed wealth and others can acquire it through luck or hard work–the reality of how good one has it skews their vision of what is and what should be. And, by extension, affluence skews how they see others according to what they have, where they live, what they drive, what clothes they wear, what they do for work and what their parents did before them. We then build our social circles around those who share the same culture-as-financial status, which is why the upper-middle class Democratic-Socialists hangout together and debate which sneakers they are going to buy to exhibit their political engagement. The sneakers as political action serve as a signifier of affluenza– lack of motivation, social isolation, and waste (don’t forget guilt for having previously bought the wrong sneakers).
The tension between guilt and lack of motivation plays out most obviously in the affluent dis-engaged Democratic-Socialist who participates as an armchair philosopher, throwing out the occasional tweet, taking part in an online forum, or even going as far as to produce a podcast. This virtual political action is no doubt reflective of the social isolation that is common of affluenza. If you can’t relate to the cause your vying for and you don’t fit in with the people you’re advocating for, you might as well stay home, angrily tweeting at your rich uncle while hoping he doesn’t cut your name from the family Christmas list because you know that the only thing worse than Bazos’ excessive accumulation of wealth is Christmas without presents.
But affluenza has other even more evidentiary impacts as the case of my friends the tattoo artist and the attorney illustrates. Affluenza itself has perpetuated the notion that causes can survive on monetary investment and that those contributions can serve in lieu of actual participation. What this says is not only is capital still the primary driving force in socio-political change (and the reason why there cannot be actual economic change), but also that those who have money to give, including the time and funds to produce a podcast, are more valuable contributors to the case. Those with financial means get to be the ones who create change and thereby add validity to this “dogged pursuit of more” as even working class advocates of Democratic-Socialism come to see that if they could just afford to give a greater financial contribution to their candidate and the cause, they too could be viable agents of change.
You see, the root cause that ideology veils never disappears. With capitalism the ideology is that hard work pays off–that if you work hard enough, you will be better off–more socially and economically viable. You work hard to contribute to society, participate and invest financially, and your worth grows. But we can’t all grow equally. The ideology masks the fact that for someone to be better off, someone else has to be worse off. The mask conceals how few people can be at the top and how little effect effort actually bears on significantly raising in socio-economic class. In capitalism the majority of wealth is consolidated in the hands of a few and there must be a relatively large number of poor.
In Democratic-Socialism the ideology is “that both the economy and society should be run democratically—to meet public needs, not to make profits for a few” and that this is done by everyone working collectively to meet human needs” (8). But when human needs are tied to the need to produce or contribute useful things, to invest in things and having things, people will always interact with a comparative eye– “is that guy doing his share?” Further, with the DSA’s notion that consumer goods producing companies could be publicly/cooperatively owned, we can to presume that people will continue to be consumers. In a society where sustenance is ensured by production and thereby consumption of non-necessary goods, even one that is more fair and equal in which all people could participate, the ideology remains that we could better meet needs if we, as a collective, can make more things and provide more options and we, as individuals, can participate in the economy more fully. Because of this, a Democratic-Socialism rooted in the current socio-economic climate with affluenza ridden gen-Xers and Millennials at the helm is roughly as inefficient as the Obama Administration in its promise to produce substantial change. Until DSA actually attacks the undergirding economic structure that has shaped not only American identity but also our perception of reality and needs, there is no possible way to actually achieve an equality that could undeniably unilaterally perceived as equal.
Really, how is affluenza induced Democratic-Socialism different than Conscious Capitalism? If anything it takes “they know very well what they are doing, but still, they are doing it” to another level– “they know very well what they are doing and that it won’t change a thing, but still, they are doing it because in reality they don’t want it to.” I have argued that Conscious Capitalism’s conformity to and perpetuation of the status quo of under the premise that capitalism can be made more virtuous only pours salt in the wounds, ignoring the core inequities capitalism by definition requires. Conscious Capitalism says everyone can be brought up instead of repressed when capitalism is done with a soul. Democratic-Socialism that attempts to retain capitalist industry under the guise or cooperativism does the same thing. The exponentially greater wokeness of the DSA is that it knows that industry must be completely dismantled to be restructured to address meeting actual needs instead of desires. However, in the same mocking sense that far left podcasters use when referring to “woke capitalists,” “woke socialists” have absolutely no idea how to get past their privilege, which, as I have explained, is because they really have no reason to want to. With the proponents of Democratic-Socialism awkwardly uncomfortable in actually working towards creating a world where they may not be able to have whatever they want when they want it (to a greater or lesser extent depending on their level of privilege), wokeness remains an idle threat to the establishment. Sitting on a pile of underpants, woke socialists comfortably relish in the abundance of question marks that sits before them instead of striving, possibly in discomfort, to have something greater than a useless pile of unjustly obtained commodities.
(1) “Woke” as a slang term was added to Merriam-Webster’s “Words We’re Watching” in September 2017: https://www.merriam-webster.com/words-at-play/woke-meaning-origin
(2) “Gnomes,” South Park, season 2, episode 17 (1998).
(3) See, Chris Mills Rodrigo, “Vans shoes face boycott calls after company removes design referring to Hong Kong protests,” The Hill (7 Oct 19):
(4) See Slavoj Zizek, The Sublime Object of Ideology (Verso, 1989).
(5) DSA, FAQs: https://www.dsausa.org/about-us/what-is-democratic-socialism/#govt
(6) Ibid.
(7) “Affluenza,” Merriam-Webster: https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/affluenza; See also: https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/574773/affluenza-by-john-de-graaf-david-wann-and-thomas-h-naylor/
(8) DSA, FAQ.
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