[Author's note: this article is a continuation of Part 1.]
Psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan once said, ”Since Freud, the center of man is not where we thought it was; one has to go on from there”. So, we should “go on from there”. We should confirm that the logic and language of politics is steeped in unconscious influences, of which most citizens and politicians are totally unaware. And insofar as our society still considers psychoanalysis a taboo topic, we should expect our politics to be dysfunctional—that is, until we make discussions of the unconscious a commonplace, cultural norm.
Given this, in Part 1, we discussed the logic of “disavowal” and the role “fantasy” plays in it, in everyday reality. We noted that fantasy allows individuals to ignore crucial facts, that disturb their relation to reality. And we did so by noting how the “League of Shadows” in the film “Batman Begins” functions as a fantasy, which allows the audience to disavow disturbing facts about capitalist society.
Thus, we can now examine how disavowal works in corporatist ideology. By understanding this, we can better grasp how the Supreme Court’s decision in “Citizen’s United” was based partially on the disavowal of crucial facts, via the influence of political fantasy.
The Fantasy and “Gap” of Ideology
Every form of ideology, corporatist or otherwise, contains a “built-in” fantasy element. This fantasy-element explains away (or disavows) the inconsistency within the ideology’s own logic. The fantasy, then, compensates for the “gaps” in the ideology—the gaps which fail to account for the sum total of existing social reality. Or, as psychoanalyst Slavoj Zizek puts it: “fantasy is a means for an ideology to take its own failure into account in advance.”
Let’s start with the example Zizek frequently evokes: fascist anti-Semitism. And again, we’ll see the logic of disavowal at work. Recall, from Part 1, that the logic of disavowal is: “I know very well…, but…”
Accordingly, fascists “know very well” that Jews are not sub-human, demonic beings—who conspire to sabotage the economy, hoard the national wealth, and secretly plot world dominance; “but” the facsist can better cope with reality, through his identification with a fascist power structure, if he disavows this knowledge and believes this anti-Semitic logic, anyway.
Within the logic of ideological disavowal, here, two points should be made:
(1) The fascist maintains his sense of self-worth by identifying with something outside himself, i.e.: the fascist power structure. He feels empowered and respected insofar as fascist state, itself, is empowered and respected. His “sense of self” is dependent on the state’s existence and on his obedience to that state.
(2) Since no ideology can fully account for the sum total of social reality, a fantasy-element is always incorporated. The fantasy-element then serves to disavow the gaps in the logic of the ideology. In other words, when an ideology fails to explain problematic aspects of a society, the fantasy is evoked to explain those failures. For fascism, the figure of the ‘Jew’ is that fantasy.
Note that the two basic points illustrated, here, operate within any ideology—fascist, capitalist, or otherwise. The only difference is the varation of the spesific ideology (of course) and the corresponding fantasy-element, to the spesific ideology.
So, in the fascist context, poverty and political failures are explained by the ‘Jew’ and the “Jewish plot”. The “Jewish plot”, to subvert the otherwise harmonious society, is evoked to offset the failures of fascist politics to make that harmonious society. The figure of the ‘Jew’ is, therefore, created as a fantasy-element and used as a scapegoat, to disavow fascism’s own failures.
For the fascist, himself, it is not the faults of his government that caused the failures, but rather the ‘Jews’ caused the failures. The ‘Jew’ is evoked, then, to maintain their identification with the political power structure, which gives them their “sense of self”—their sense of empowerment and belonging.
Note that it is ineffective, to say any of this to a fascist ideologue. No impact is made by doing so. To shout, “Hey! Really-existing Jews have nothing in common with your idea of the ‘Jew’! Jews are no more or less human than any other citizen here!”, will get no desired result.
The fascist will simply disavow such facts, in order to maintain his sense of self. This is because the fascist needs to believe in the sub-human figure of the ‘Jew’, in order to stabilize his psychology, to experience himself as empowered—via his immutable ideology.
The Corporatist “Social Body” Fantasy
A crucial similarity, between fascism and today’s corporatism (capitalism), is the shared fantasy of the “Social Body”.
As a fantasy, the “Social Body” allows the individual to believe that society would be harmonious under the current ideology, if it weren’t for, say, the ‘Jews’ who live in the same society. Slavoj Zizek explains this fantasy:
“the corporatist vision [is] of Society as an organic Whole, a social Body in which the different classes are like extremities, members each contributing to the Whole according to their function—we may say that ‘Society as a corporate Body’ is the fundamental ideological fantasy.”
For the fascist, obviously, the “gap” between the flawless vision of the “Social Body” is explained by the “Jewish plot”. It was for this reason that 20th century fascism created concentration camps, to eliminate the “gap” (the ‘Jews’) between the Social Body and really-existing society.
But as Zizek notes, “‘Society as a corporate Body’ is the fundamental ideological fantasy”. This is because the three forms of social organization in modernity—fascism, communism, and capitalism—all base their ideologies on the same basic fantasy of the ‘Social Body’.
We’ve already discussed fascism. But communist ideology works the same way, only with variations on the theme:
Instead of the ‘Jew’ blocking the social harmony, it is the figure of the ‘Traitor’, who has deviated from the Party line. As such, the ‘Traitors’ must be rooted out and murdered or thrown into gulags. Like the ‘Jew’, the ‘Traitor’ is a fantasy-element—which is why so many loyal communists, who never deviated from the Party dogma, were executed after enduring Soviet “show trials”; they weren’t ‘Traitors’ to begin with.
Finally, we can examine how the Social Body, disavowal, and fantasy-elements also figure into corporatist ideology.
The “Great Beast” and other American Fantasies
The fantasy-elements of corporatist (capitalist) ideology are deep-seated. Their origins may be traced back to the founding of the Unites States, itself.
In his essay, “Consent Without Consent”, historian Noam Chomsky notes:
“that “the Constitution was intrinsically an aristocratic document designed to check the democratic tendencies of the period,” delivering power to a “better sort” of people and excluding those who were not rich, well born, or prominent from exercising political power [...] The primary responsibility of government is “to protect the minority of the opulent against the majority,” [James] Madison declared.”
In Madison’s idea of the “minority of the opulent”, we already see the first fantasy-element operating within American ideology. The question instantly comes to mind: Why is this “minority” of Americans “opulent”, a somehow extra-special “better sort”?…. Well, because this minority is “rich”, formally educated, and landowning; that’s why. But the logic here is circular, thus fallacious—Madison’s “minority” is a “better sort” because they are “rich”; and they are “rich” because they are a “better sort”. Clearly, this is not an acceptable argument.
It’s not difficult, either, to find the disavowal working in Madison’s logic, as in: “I know very well” that the ‘minority of the opulent’ is a nonsensical idea; “but” I can better cope with reality if I disavow this fact and believe in it, anyway, to maintain the status quo.
Nevertheless, this still became the reigning doctrine. Accordingly, the first Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, John Jay, affirmed that: “The People who own the country ought to govern it.”And, well, who owns the country?… The “minority of the opulent”. Note, here, that the circular logic is as nonsensical as extending the rights of human beings to non-human corporations—which is what “corporate personhood” is, and what factored into the Supreme Court’s recent “Citizens United” decision. (So, obviously, the Court is as deluded today as it was when John Jay was seated, to say the least.)
But the fantasies don’t not stop there. The “minority of the opulent” further justified their doctrine by adhering to another fantasy, Alexander Hamilton’s idea of the “Great Beast”. Chomsky explains:
“The people are a “great beast” that must be tamed, [Madison's] colleague Alexander Hamilton declared. [...] The common people were not to be represented by countrymen like themselves, who know the people’s sores, but by gentry, merchants, lawyers, and other “responsible men” who could be trusted to defend privilege.”
Under the figure of the ‘Great Beast’, the citizenry is seen as somehow less-human, less-worthy of fair and humane consideration than the “minority of the opulent” is. In this sense, the ‘Great Beast’ is the American fantasy-element, par excellence. It validates the state ideology via a delusion. And with “the people” not seen as really-existing people, but rather as less-human than the “opulent minority” are, the American population acquires a sub-human status not that dissimilar from the figure of the ‘Jew’, under fascism.
James Madison offered a synonym for the “Great Beast”, as well: the “covetous majority”—which was to be unequally compared to the “opulent minority”. And doesn’t the very phrase, “covetous majority”, evoke the same kind of mythical plotting and social sabotage that the ’Jew’ evokes for the fascist state? The only key difference here is that the “covetous majority” is not to be systematically killed (like the ‘Jews’). Rather, the “covetous majority” is to be economically exploited for the sake of the “opulent minority”.
The basic fantasy of the Social Body is, of course, in play in American ideology, as well. Recall that with the Social Body, “the different classes are like extremities, members each contributing to the Whole according to their function.” So here, the larger population, the “Great Beast”, is seen by the state as a volatile, unstable extremity of the larger corporate Body. This unstable extremity is always potentially going to revolt, or reject being incorporated and used without a fuss (much like a transplanted organ always threatens to “reject” its larger body).
Given this, the state uses propaganda—what Chomsky terms in today’s media “manufacturing consent”—to tame this extremity into submission. Though, when the extremity of the “Great Beast” does revolt, the state must repress the “Beast” by force—that is, police brutality, condoned by the legal apparatus of “law and order”. This is the context, of course, of the brutality against women’s sufferage protestors (192o’s), the labor movement strikers (1930′s), and the civil rights marchers (1950′-60′s). All of these cases of state brutality should be seen as attepmts to force the “Great Beast” back into the fantasy of the state’s ideal Social Body.
The late-historian Howard Zinn, in his essay, “Economic Justice: the American Class System”, notes how the Mobil Oil Corporation gladly evoked Madison’s “covetous majority” in a newspaper advertisement, which reached 50 million people:
Why was property to be included with life and liberty as a fundamental right? Because the Framers saw it as one of the great natural rights … to keep what one had earned or made—that ought to be forever secure from any covetous majority.
Indeed, “corporate personhood”—and the state’s upholding corporate interests over those of “the people”—is but an expected extension of America’s founding ideological fantasies. The US Supreme Court’s decision in “Citizens United” was not some break with American “democracy”. It was not some kind of “take over”, in which ”We the people” should get “our nation back”—we never “had” a nation to begin with. It was always John Jay’s nation, Alexander Hamilton’s nation. It was always the “minority of the opulent” who owned the country, and ran it as they saw fit, while distracting the “Great Beast” with political rhetoric and propaganda.
But we should note that every gain in civil rights history, every extension of liberty, has been made when “the people” see through the state’s ideological fantasies, when the people civilly-disobey until the state acts according to the people’s demands for justice. Only then does “Change” become more than just rhetoric, spouted by US presidents.
And this same logic, here, applies to today political crises. If we really want “Change”, if we want the corporations out of our political process, we can begin by seeing through the fantasies and enacting yet another social revolution. The decision for democracy, in this case alone, is freely ours to make. In fact, the transition to “democratic socialism”, that both Chomsky and Zinn advocate, arguably has a greater chance of occurring if liberals and the Left incorporate psychoanalysis into their criticisms of the ideological status quo. Only then will the fantasies fully crumble, and the people can finally admit: “the emperor has no clothes”
Stephen Dufrechou is Editor of Opinion and Analysis for News Junkie Post. He is a regular contributor to News Junkie Post. Please follow this author on twitter. His archive may be accesed here.
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Stephen,
You have raise the bar to new highs for yourself (and all of us on the site) with this masterful deconstruction of the myth that is too often confused for what should be a real democracy, where the masses are allowed to have not only the crumbs but their long overdue share of the pie. Bravo!
I consider myself a fairly intelligent person, but this is some deep stuff.
This is an awesome and challenging read. I agree in that much of what we believe about society is rooted in fallacies in order for a particular contingent to maintain control. This willful self-deception on the part of the antagonist is a powerful tool as it distorts reality for those who rely on “more capable” people to define it for them. It is easy to leave a false political impression on people who buy into beliefs that absolve them of the responsibility to form their own functional ideology and/or challenge those that exist. It also absolves the powers that be from accepting the failures of their own. It’s a vicious cycle and the search for the real is only a path for the philosophical “terrorist”, those who risk being misunderstood in an effort to dismantle what we think we understand.