Privilege, Commodification, and the American Dream
A free market society is good for everyone, right? In it, everyone has the same opportunity to succeed and make something of themselves. Or as my high school economics teacher put it, “Capitalism and free markets allow us to succeed or fail on our own efforts and merits.” That statement made total sense to a bunch of white, lower middle class students in a small private, Christian school. Of course it did. Didn’t we just learn that the pilgrims and founding fathers succeeded in establishing this country by the sweat of their brow and undying faith in God? And hadn’t that chapel speaker just told us how God blesses those who work hard, tithe, and tell others about Jesus? It’s the American way, after all, right?
How steeped in privilege were we?
Sadly, the privilege of the American dream built on a free-market economy remains a prevailing thread despite the reality that, as Karl Polanyi notes, a market economy requires the commodification of both humanity and creation.[1] Commodification necessitates hierarchy. Where once the commoners rebelled against royalty in an attempt to gain equality, average citizens now subject ourselves to the hierarchy of privilege and wealth. We look toward the day when we too can afford those things the upper echelon affords. We work hard, believing that all it will take is effort and maybe one lucky break to push us forward to the next level.
Privilege and commodification inevitably result in cognitive dissonance. People of color have long understood that the American dream does not look the same for everyone. People caught in cycles of poverty have always known that they are commodities on whose backs the dreams of others are built. But those of us with privilege – we who have heard the stories of how our ancestors pulled themselves up by their bootstraps and accomplished the dream – are beginning to understand that the free market isn’t serving us the way it served our grandparents. In fact, we have become slaves to the market rather than the other way around. But how can that be? There are still the incredibly rich. There are still the strikingly well off. Why is that margin shrinking, while our margin is growing, sliding into the poverty scale?
I believe this dissonance has led us to where we, as a nation, are today. We are tired of mountains of student debt, medical bills, mortgages that are beyond our reach, and jobs that either require more education, or cannot sustain a livable wage. Farmers watch as corporations and regulations destroy their family legacies. Mining and logging towns fold, leaving people nowhere to go. In the midst of this, we are looking for something to restore our hope. We need someone to tell us that it’s going to be okay, that there is someone “other” to blame for our situation. Nationalism feels like our only hope. It feels like we need to separate ourselves from the failing markets of the world and go back to the time when our fields were lush and ready for harvest, our communities were sustained by local industry, and we met our neighbors in church on Sunday.
We aren’t the first people to want to be great again, whose cry for restoration resulted in a nationalism that was willing to do anything. It happened not so long ago in Germany, too. As Moyn notes, “Instead of seeking justification for their culture in progress and the promise of the future, Germans looked to the distant past to confirm their sense of national greatness, elevating folklore and myths to the pinnacle of high art.”[2] When slogans like, “Make America Great Again” become a battle cry, it is important to look at how our economy has taken us to a place where so many are disenfranchised.
I am not comparing our current president to Hitler. That would be a topic for another post altogether. What I am comparing, however, is the fear and anger of one people who looked around and realized they may never achieve the cosmopolitan nature of England and France, may never enjoy the societal opulence of their neighbors, to the fear and anger in our country. When we say we want to “take America back,” what do we mean? When we scoff at celebrities who speak out for justice, is it their words that irritate us or their success? When we replace “Black Lives Matter” with “All Lives Matter,” are we really angry at black people fighting for their place at the table, or are we angry that our place at the table is getting smaller and less important?
[1]. Karl Polanyi, The Great Transformation: The Political and Economic Origins of Our Time, (Boston: Beacon Press, 1944), 136-137.
[2]. Samuel Moyn, “Here’s How to Understand Our Age of Anger,” New Republic. Last modified January 31, 2017, Accessed February 2, 2017. https://newrepublic.com/article/140242/look-back-anger.
About the Author
Kristin Hamilton
16 responses to “Privilege, Commodification, and the American Dream”
Leave a Reply
You must be logged in to post a comment.
Ahhh Kristin, this sounds idyllic: “….go back to the time when our fields were lush and ready for harvest, our communities were sustained by local industry, and we met our neighbors in church on Sunday.” Take us there…I vote Kristin for president! Before I nominate you, how would you propose to accomplish this?
Laura Ingles from Little House on the Prairie comes to mind. Simple, rustic, and raw, with real problems, honest connections, trustworthy neighbors, and homemade biscuits every day (made with flour that didn’t wreck the digestive tracks). I suspect that’s why this series was so popular. We all long for some of this simple life.
Hear, hear! I grew up living on the prairie and wishing Laura’s story was my story. Ironically, I just read TODAY an article on privilege about the “forgotten debt” we have as a nation, and Little House was mentioned:
“I read several hundred pages of ‘Little House on the Prairie’ to my 5-year-old son one day when he was home sick from school. Near the end of the book, when the Ingalls family is reckoning with the fact that they built their little house illegally on Indian Territory, and just after an alliance between tribes has been broken by a disagreement over whether or not to attack the settlers, Laura watches the Osage abandoning their annual buffalo hunt and leaving Kansas. Her family will leave, too. At this point, my son asked me to stop reading. ‘Is it too sad?’ I asked. ‘No,’ he said, ‘I just don’t need to know any more.’” That image is much more complicated than we wish it were. And I don’t remember this part when I first read it as a kid.
Here’s the full article: https://www.nytimes.com/2015/12/06/magazine/white-debt.html
I remember reading that, Katy. While the Little House TV series did bring a sense of nostalgia, the books addressed much more of the complexity of “the good old days.”
Jennifer, we long for simpler times, but we really don’t. We like our phones and our computers. We want our hybrid cars and our ready-to-wear clothes, and our organic kale salads (ok, maybe that last one is just me). We opened ourselves to the chaos of consumerism (especially in the 80s) and now we are frustrated because we are the ones being commodified and consumed. What confuses me is that, in an attempt to undo what we have done, we elected a billionaire who deals in gold-plated buildings most of us could never afford. We have abandoned the simplicity of the gospel for the promises of people who don’t have our best interests at heart but are bought and sold by lobbyists.
In order to accomplish a simpler life, we will have to make sacrifices. When I think about the Little House on the Prairie, what I think about is the way the entire community sacrificed for each other over and over again. Until we return to that kind of love for neighbor, we probably won’t get what we long for.
Nice take on both Polanyi’s identification of the commodification of humans and creation, as well as connecting it to our current global angsts. The working classes and lower classes are recognizing their place at the table is getting smaller. Polanyi claims that there are two possible alternatives to the capitalistic dissonance: fascism & socialism. While many in our nation gravitate to the alt-right, many others look left (“feel the Bern!”). Polayni has his preference & puts it thus: “The discovery of society is thus either the end or the rebirth of freedom. While the fascist resigns himself to relinquishing freedom and glorifies power which is the reality of society, the socialist resigns himself to that reality and upholds the claim to freedom, in spite of it.” 268
Good points, Katy. Like you, I tend to lean “left” as I look toward Scandinavian democratic socialism. I wish we could take the lessons some of these older countries have learned and apply them but we are so “young” and arrogant we will have to make our own mistakes. There is still so much leftover Red Scare fear in this country (some rightly so, considering how much damage Communism has done in this world) that we can’t get to a place where we protect each other. Individualism reigns as monarch of America.
“Farmers watch as corporations and regulations destroy their family legacies. Mining and logging towns fold, leaving people nowhere to go”…
Wendell Berry’s writing on this is touching and poignant. The way he writes about the younger generations coming in and denuding the land and dishonouring the family legacy on the altar of ever-increasing profits perfectly illustrates the commodification of land and people that ultimately leads to social disintegration. We kill the golden goose and destroy what nurtures us…
I love Wendell Berry, Geoff. Logging is in my family’s blood and there is so much hatred against ecologists who fought for the habitat of the spotted owl that was being wiped out by clear-cutting of the forests. The ecologists treated the logging community like ignorant rubes who were too uncivilized to understand. The loggers treated ecologists like elitists who were too “citified” to understand. Because no one bothered to hear the other out, the logging communities were destroyed. Now that it’s too late for those communities, the logging industry has made changes to the way they harvest and replant, and the ecologists have worked with the industry to write guidelines that make sense. But families have moved away and the communities have shriveled.
Kristin, you really hit on a deeper issue. Why would anyone want the “good old days”?
What do they mean by “American Greatness”?
First, bad as things are, I don’t want the good old days. Women’s average life span was only 48; today it’s 78.
Secondly, I suspect that the greatness many people are talking about is the power that the US has militarily. We have become the big bully on the block. I don’t want that either.
I dream of the day when there is room at the table for everyone.
Thanks for a super post!!
I’m with you, Mary! I would be in real trouble if we suddenly went back in time. I don’t garden, I can’t cook or sew, and I am absolutely no good at letting men dictate my life. 🙂
Seriously though, you make a good point that we are a country where “might makes right.” Even when we try to protect other countries, we do it in the way that makes sense to us, rather than to them. Let’s make that bigger table so that everyone can have a place.
Kristen, a very powerful post that brings to bear some important issues with well written insights.
You said: ‘When we say we want to “take America back,” what do we mean? When we scoff at celebrities who speak out for justice, is it their words that irritate us or their success? When we replace “Black Lives Matter” with “All Lives Matter,” are we really angry at black people fighting for their place at the table, or are we angry that our place at the table is getting smaller and less important?’
I think this is the crux of the issue – as I once heard it said: when you have lived with privilege your whole life, equality can feel like oppression….. That, of course, does not justify the feeling, but it does (I think) help us understand the anger and frustration that elected Trump and is at play in so many other situations.
The question, as it applies to those of us that claim faith in Jesus, could be this: Are we willing to move over and squeeze in around the table of God’s blessing to make room for our sisters and brothers, or are we content to say a prayer for them as we enjoy the space of privilege?
I think privilege is at the center of it all, Chip. Evangelical Christians (counter-intuitively, in my opinion) have politically aligned with those who promise to “give back” Christian privilege. Never mind that Christian privilege comes at the expense of other religions. White Americans have politically aligned with someone who promises to reduce the number of black and brown people in America, promises to use resources only for “real Americans,” and to close our borders against those who are considered other. I don’t understand how this is supported by our faith or by Scripture.
Kristen, what a powerful post. You rightly say,
“we are tired;” and “we are looking for something to restore our hope;” and “We need someone to tell us that it’s going to be okay.” In three statements you have summed up the cry of our world today—ergo the unrest, dissidence, and dichotomy that we see every day. I do believe it’s a great time for the Church and Christians to be the example and the salt and light; and that Christ is that “someone.” Thanks for a great post.
I agree, Jim. We have to do better at leading the gospel life.
Kristin, So many thoughts– but truths
We are seen by other countries, as the riches, powerful, and smart yet we are doing things backward. Our officials no longer represent the people but themselves. Corporate owners are looking out for their our personal gain (I must say that there are some corporate owners who care for their employees). America is not a good representative of Christian love during these past eight years and the upcoming years.
As Christians, we need to go in prayer and seek God’s face. Many of our leaders have replaced God’s purpose with their own.
So true, Lynda. We have not been good representatives of Christian love. We have not lived the gospel life as abundant and rife with love. American Christianity looks miserly and petty.