{"id":11332,"date":"2017-02-01T21:22:59","date_gmt":"2017-02-02T05:22:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/dminlgp.com\/?p=11332"},"modified":"2017-02-01T21:22:59","modified_gmt":"2017-02-02T05:22:59","slug":"privilege-commodification-and-the-american-dream","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/privilege-commodification-and-the-american-dream\/","title":{"rendered":"Privilege, Commodification, and the American Dream"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>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, \u201cCapitalism and free markets allow us to succeed or fail on our own efforts and merits.\u201d 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\u2019t 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\u2019t that chapel speaker just told us how God blesses those who work hard, tithe, and tell others about Jesus? It\u2019s the American way, after all, right?<\/p>\n

How steeped in privilege were we?<\/p>\n

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]<\/a> 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.<\/p>\n

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 \u2013 we who have heard the stories of how our ancestors pulled themselves up by their bootstraps and accomplished the dream \u2013 are beginning to understand that the free market isn\u2019t 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?<\/p>\n

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\u2019s going to be okay, that there is someone \u201cother\u201d 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.<\/p>\n

We aren\u2019t 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, \u201cInstead 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.\u201d[2]<\/a> When slogans like, \u201cMake America Great Again\u201d become a battle cry, it is important to look at how our economy has taken us to a place where so many are disenfranchised.<\/p>\n

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 \u201ctake America back,\u201d 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 \u201cBlack Lives Matter\u201d with \u201cAll Lives Matter,\u201d 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?<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

<\/a>\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 [1]. Karl Polanyi, The Great Transformation: The Political and Economic Origins of Our Time<\/em>, (Boston: Beacon Press, 1944), 136-137.<\/p>\n

<\/a>\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 [2]. Samuel Moyn, \u201cHere\u2019s How to Understand Our Age of Anger,\u201d New Republic<\/em>. Last modified January 31, 2017, Accessed February 2, 2017. https:\/\/newrepublic.com\/article\/140242\/look-back-anger.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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, \u201cCapitalism and free markets allow us to succeed or fail on our own efforts and merits.\u201d That statement made total sense to a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":91,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[4],"class_list":["post-11332","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-polanyi","cohort-lgp7"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11332","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/91"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11332"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11332\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11332"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11332"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11332"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}