Beliefs do not arise out of nothing: they are an adaptation to the situations in which people find themselves, sometimes challenging these situations. There are three main ways in which beliefs supportive of capitalism develop and are maintained: daily life, schooling and mass media.
First, most people adjust their beliefs to be compatible with their daily life. This is a process of reducing “cognitive dissonance,” namely the difference between reality and thought. If daily life is filled with buying and selling, this makes market exchange seem more natural. If daily life involves working as an employee along with many others, this makes selling one’s labour power seem more natural. If daily life involves noticing that some people are very rich and some very poor, this makes great economic inequality seem more natural.
But just because something seems natural does not necessarily make it positive or desirable. There is, though, a general tendency for people to believe that the world is just. When someone is poor, this is a potential challenge to the assumption that the world is just. One way to cope is to believe that the poor person is to blame.
Of course, for wealthy and privileged people, it is tempting to believe that they deserve their wealth and privilege, and that others deserve their misfortune. Beliefs in the virtues of capitalism are commonly stronger among its greatest beneficiaries.
Part of day-to-day experience is interacting with other people. If others share certain beliefs, it can be hard to express contrary views, and easier to keep quiet or adapt one’s beliefs to standard ones.
A second source of beliefs is schooling. Children learn conventional views about society, learn that they are supposed to defer to authority and learn that they need to earn a living. Just as important as what is learned in the classroom is what is learned from the structure of the schooling experience: pupils are expected to follow the instructions of their teachers, a process that is good training for being an obedient employee.
A third source of beliefs about capitalism is the mass media, especially the commercial media, which “sell” capitalism incessantly through advertisements, through pictures of the “good life” in Hollywood movies and television shows, and in plot lines in which good guys always win. Due to global media coverage, basketball star Michael Jordan became a cult figure even in countries where basketball is not a big sport. Jordan is a symbol of competitive success. He embodies the assumption that someone can become rich and famous by being talented and that being rich and famous is a good thing, worth identifying with and emulating. Jordan thus is living testimony to the capitalist marketplace, even setting aside the products that he endorses. Sport generally is something that is sold through the mass media, especially television, and used to sell other products, such as Nike running shoes and McDonald’s.[17]
As well as the beliefs listed above, there are others commonly found in capitalist societies, but of course not everyone subscribes to every one of these beliefs. Nevertheless, the passionate commitment to certain core beliefs by some people (especially those with the most power) and general acceptance by many others makes it possible for capitalism to carry on most of the time without the overt use of force to repress challenges. This process is commonly called hegemony.
There are quite a few contradictions within usual belief systems. Here are some examples.
The ideology of capitalism is a free market in labour. This implies unrestricted immigration, but all governments and most people oppose this.[18]
Sexual and racial discrimination is incompatible with a labour market based on merit.
A free market in services implies the elimination of barriers based on credentials. For example, anyone should be able to practise as a doctor or lawyer.
A key group involved in shaping belief systems is intellectuals. Although universities are attacked by right- wing commentators as havens for left-wing radicals, in practice most academics, journalists, teachers, policy analysts and other knowledge workers support or accept the basic parameters of the capitalist system. Through advertising, public relations, policy development and public commentary, intellectuals give legitimacy to beliefs supportive of capitalism. Many of the most vehement intellectual disputes, for example over employment, public ownership and taxation, are about how best to manage capitalism, not how to transcend it.
Destruction of Alternatives
For the past several centuries, alternatives to capitalism have been systematically destroyed or coopted. Sometimes this is through the direct efforts of owners and managers and sometimes it is accomplished by the state.
The family-based “putting-out” system of production was replaced by the factory system. The new system was initially not any more efficient but gave owners the power to extract more surplus from workers.[19]
Workers’ control initiatives have been smashed. Sometimes this is at the factory level. In revolutionary situations, such as Paris in 1871 or Spain in 1936-1939, it has been at a much wider scale.
Provision of welfare from the state, including pensions, unemployment payments, disability and veterans’ supports and child maintenance, undercuts community-based systems of collective welfare and mutual support.[20] This helps to atomise the community, making state provision seem the only possibility.
Worker-controlled organising is opposed. Trade unions are often tolerated or cultivated as a way of coopting worker discontent, so long as the unions focus on wages and conditions rather than control over production.
Left-wing governments have often acted to dampen direct action by workers.[21]
Affluence and the promotion of satisfaction through consumption have bought off many dissidents, actual and potential.
Socialist governments, especially those that provide an inspiring example to others, have been attacked by political pressure, withdrawal of investment, blockades, destabilisation and wars.
International agreements and agencies, including the International Monetary Fund, World Bank and World Trade Organisation, are used to expand opportunities for capitalism, especially through opening national economies to international investment.
The production and promotion of attractive new products and services make people want to join the consumer society.[22] Many commodities appeal to people’s wants, including junk food, television, stylish cars and trendy clothes, especially targeting people’s worries about relative status.[23] An orientation to commodities serves to displace achievement of human values that are possible without commodities, including friendship and work satisfaction.
Alternatives to capitalism can provide both a material and symbolic challenge. For example, socialist governments provide a material challenge by preventing capitalist investment and reducing markets. The symbolic challenge is that an alternative is possible, and this can be a more far-reaching threat. This is why even small countries such as Cuba and Nicaragua, with little impact on the global economy, may be seen as such a dire threat by elites in dominant capitalist countries. To reduce this symbolic challenge, such governments have been attacked militarily and economically and by sustained disinformation campaigns designed to reduce their credibility. One way to defend against such attacks is through a more authoritarian socialist government, which then serves to discredit the alternative.
This was the scenario following the Russian Revolution, which occurred without much violence and had significant libertarian aspects. The invasion of the Soviet Union by eight western countries over the period 1918- 1920 had the impact of militarising the revolution, helping set the stage for the repression under Stalin and making the Soviet Union a far less attractive model than it might have been otherwise. To this was added an unceasing campaign of anti-socialist propaganda that was only interrupted by the military alliance with the Soviet Union against Nazi Germany during World War II.
Attacking and discrediting alternatives is one approach. Another is cooption, namely incorporating the alternative, or part of it, into the capitalist system, or winning over adherents of the alternative view. This happens frequently at the individual level. Vocal critics of capitalism may seek to rise in the system so as to be more effective in their challenge, only to become much more accepting of capitalism, and sometimes even advocates of it. Cooperatives that are set up as alternatives to commercial enterprises often gradually become more similar to
