Cultural imperialism in the late 20th century by James Petras
China and the World
Introduction
U.S cultural imperialism has two major goals, one economic and the
other political: to capture markets for its cultural commodities and to
establish hegemony by shaping popular consciousness. The export of
entertainment is one of the most important sources of capital
accumulation and global profits displacing manufacturing exports. In
the political sphere, cultural imperialism plays a major role in
dissociating people from their cultural roots and traditions of
solidarity, replacing them with media created needs which change with
every publicity campaign. The political effect in to alienate people
from traditional class and community bonds, atomizing and separating
individuals from each other.
Cultural imperialism emphasizes the segmentation of the working class:
stable workers are encouraged to dissociate themselves from temporary
workers, who in turn separate themselves from the unemployed, who are
further segmented among themselves within the 'underground economy'.
Cultural imperialism encourage working people to think of themselves as
part of a hierarchy emphasizing minute differences in life style, in
race and gander, with those below them rather than the vast
inequalities that separate them from those above.
The principle target of cultural imperialism is the political and
economic exploitation of youth. Imperial entertainment and
advertisement target young people who are most vulnerable to U.S.
commercial propaganda. The message is simple and direct: 'modernity' in
associated with consuming U.S. media products. Youth represent a major
market for U.S. cultural export and they are most susceptible to the
consumerist-individualist propaganda. The mass media manipulates
adolescent rebelliousness by appropriating the language of the left and
channeling discontent into consumer extravagances.
Cultural imperialism focuses on youth not only as a market but also
for political reasons: to undercut a political threat in which personal
rebellion could become political revolt against economic as well as
cultural forms of control.
Over the past decade progressive movements confront a paradox: while
the great majority of the people in the Third World experience
deteriorating living standards, growing social and personal insecurity
and decay in public services (while affluent minorities prosper as
never before) the subjective response to these conditions has been
sporadic revolts, sustained, but local activities and large scale
protests of short duration. In a word, there is a profound gap between
the growing inequalities and socio-economic conditions on the one hand
and the weaknesses of revolutionary or radical subjective responses.
The maturing 'objective conditions' in the Third World have not been
accompanied by the growth of subjective forces capable of transforming
the state or society. It is clear that there is no 'automatic-
relationship between socio-economic regression and socio-political
transformation. Cultural intervention (in the broadest sense including
ideology, consciousness, social action) is the crucial link convertin
objective conditions into conscious political intervention.
Paradoxically, imperial policy-makers seem to have understood the
importance of cultural dimensions of political practice far better than
their adversaries.
Cultural Domination and Global Exploitation
Imperialism cannot be understood merely as an economic-military system
of control and exploitation. Cultural domination is an integral
dimension to any sustained system of global exploitation.
In relation to the Third World, cultural imperialism can be defined as
the systematic penetration and domination of the cultural life of the
popular classes by the ruling class of the West in order to reorder the
values, behavior, institutions and identity of the oppressed peoples to
conform with the interests of the imperial classes. Cultural
imperialism has taken both 'traditional' and modern forms. In past
centuries, the Church, educational system, and public authorities
played a major role in inculcating native peoples with ideas of
submission and loyalty in the name of divine or absolutist principles.
While these 'traditional' mechanisms of cultural imperialism still
operate, new modern instrumentalities rooted in contemporary
institutions have become increasingly central to imperial domination.
The mass media, publicity, advertisement and secular entertainers and
intellectuals play a major role today. In the contemporary world,
Hollywood, CNN and Disneyland are more influential than the Vatican,
the Bibe or the public relations rhetoric of political figures.
Cultural penetration is closely linked to politico-military domination
and economic exploitation. U.S. military interventions in support of
the genocidal regimes in Central America which protect its economic
interests are accompanied by intense cultural penetration. U.S.
financed evangelicals invade Indian villages to inculcate messages of
submission among the peasant-Indian victims. International conferences
are sponsored for domesticated intellectuas to discuss 'democracy and
market'. Escapist television programs sow illusions from ?another
world?. Cultural penetration is the extension of counter-insurgency
warfare by non-military means.
New Features of Cultural Colonialism
Contemporary cultural colonialism [CCC] is distinct from past
practices in several senses:
(1) It is oriented toward capturing mass audiences, not just
converting elites.
(2) The mass media, particularly television, invade the household
and function from the 'inside' and 'below' as well as from 'outside'
and above.
(3) CCC is global in scope and homogenizing in its impact: the
pretense of universalism serves to mystify the symbols, goals and
interests of the imperial power.
(4) The mass media as instruments of cultural imperialism today are
'private' only in the formal sense: the absence of formal state ties
provides a legitimate cover for the private media projecting imperial
state interests as 'news' or 'entertainment'.
(5) Under contemporary imperialism, political interests are
projected through non-imperial subjects. -News reports' focus on the
personal biographies of mercenary peasant-soldiers in Central America
and smiling working class U.S. blacks in the Gulf War.
(6) Because of the increasing gap between the promise of peace and
prosperity under unregulated capital and the reality of increasing
misery and violence, the mass media have narrowed even further the
possibilities of alternative perspectives in their programs. Total
cultural control is the counterpart of the total separation between the
brutality of real-existing capitalism and the illusory promises of the
free market.
(7) To paralyze collective responses, cultural colonialism seeks to
destroy national identities or empty them of substantive socio-economic
content. To rupture the solidarity of communities, cultural imperialism
promotes the cult of 'modernity' as conformity with external symbols.
In the name of 'individuality', social bonds are attacked and
personalities are reshaped according to the dictates of media messages.
While imperial arms disarticulate civil society, and banks pillage the
economy, the imperial media provide individuals with escapist
identities.
Cultural imperialism provides devastating demonological caricatures of
revolutionary adversaries, while encouraging collective amnesia of the
massive violence of pro-Western countries. The Western mass media never
remind their audience of the murder by anti-communist pro-U.S. regimes
of 100,000 Indiana in Guatemala, 75,000 working people in El Salvador,
50,000 victims in Nicaragua. The mass media, cover up the great
disasters resulting from the introduction of the market in Eastern
Europe and the ex-U.S.S.R., leaving hundreds of millions Impoverished.
Mass Media: Propaganda and Capital Accumulation
The mass media is one of the principal sources of wealth and power for
U.S. capital as it extends its communication networks throughout the
world. An increasing percentage of the richest North Americans derive
their wealth from the mass media. Among the 400 wealthiest Americans
the percentage deriving their wealth from the mass media increased from
9.5 percent in 1982 to 18 percent in 1989. Today almost one out of five
of the richest North Americans derive their wealth from the mass media.
Cultural capitalism has displaced manufacturing as a source of wealth
and influence in the U.S.
The mass media have become an integral part of the U.S. system of
global political and social control, as well as a major source of super
profits. As the levels of exploitation, inequality and poverty increase
in the Third World, Western controlled mass communications operate to
convert a critical public into a passive mass. Western media
celebrities and mass entertainment have become important ingredients in
deflecting potential political unrest. The Reagan presidency
highlighted the centrality of media manipulation through highly visible
but politically reactionary entertainers, a phenomena which has spread
to Latin American and Asia.
There is a direct relation between the increase in the number of
television sets in Latin America, the decline of income and the
decrease in mass struggle. In Latin America between 1980,and 1990, the
number of television sets per inhabitant increased 40 percent,, while
the real average income declined 40 percent, and a host of neo-liberal
political candidates heavily dependent on television images won the
presidency.
The increasing penetration of the mass media among the poor, the
growing investments and profits by U.S. corporations in the sale of
cultural commodities and the saturation of mass audiences with messages
that provide the poor with vicarious experiences of individual
consumption and adventure defines the current challenge of cultural
colonialism.
U.S. media messages are alienating to Third World people in a double
sense. They create illusions of 'international' and 'cross class'
bonds. Through television images a false intimacy and an imaginary link
is established between the successful subjects of the media and the
impoverished spectators in the 'barrios'. These linkages provide a
channel through which the discourse of individual solutions for private
problems is propagated. The message is clear. The victims are blamed
for their own poverty, success depends on individual efforts. Major TV
satellites, U.S. and European mass media outlets in Latin America avoid
any critique of the politico-economic origins and consequences of the
new cultural imperialism that has temporarily disoriented and
immobilized millions of impoverished Latin Americans. Imperialism and
the Politics of Language Cultural imperialism has developed a dual
strategy to counter the Left and establishing hegemony. On the one
hand, it seeks to corrupt the political language of the left; n the
other it acts to desensitize the general public to the atrocities
committed by Western powers. During the 1980's the western mass media
systematically appropriated basic ideas of the left, emptied them of
their original content and refilled them with a reactionary message.
For example, the mass media described politicians intent in restoring
capitalism and stimulating inequalities as ?reformers? or
?revolutionaries?, while their opponents were labeled ?conservatives?.
Cultural imperialism sought to promote ideological confusion and
political disorientation by reversing the meaning of political
language. Many progressive individuals became disoriented by this
ideological manipulation. As a result, they were vulnerable to the
claims of imperial ideologues who argue that the terms ?Right? and
?Left? lacked any meaning, that the distinctions have lost
significance, that ideologies no longer have meaning. By corrupting the
language of the Left and distorting the content of the Left and Right,
cultural imperialists hope to undermine the political appeals and
political practices of the anti-imperialist movements.
The second strategy of cultural imperialism was to de-sensitize the
public; to make mass murder by the Western states routine, acceptable
activities. Mass bombings in Iraq were presented in the form of video
games. By trivializing crimes against humanity, the public is
desensitized from its traditional belief that human suffering is wrong.
By emphasizing the modernity of new techniques of warfare, the mass
media glorify existing elite power ? the techno-warfare of the West.
Cultural imperialism today includes ?news? reports in which the weapons
of mass destruction are presented with human attributes while the
victims in the Third World are faceless ?aggressors- terrorists?.
Global cultural manipulation is sustained by the corruption of the
language of politics. In Eastern Europe, speculators and mafioso
seizing land, enterprises and wealth are described as ?reformers?.
Contrabandists are described as ?innovating entrepreneurs?. In the West
the concentration of absolute power to hire and fire in the hands of
management and the increased vulnerability and insecurity of labor is
called ?labor flexibility?. In the Third World the selling of national
public enterprise to giant multi-national monopolies is described as
?breaking-up monopolies?. ?Reconversion? is the euphemism for reversion
to 19th century condition of labor stripped of all social benefits.
?Restructuring? is the return to specialization in raw materials or the
transfer of income from production to speculation. ?Deregulation? is
the shift in power to regulate the economy from the national welfare
state to the international banking, multi-national power elite.
?Structural adjustments? in Latin America mean transferring resources
to investors and lowering payments to labor. The concepts of the left
(reform, agrarian reform, structural changes) were originally oriented
toward redistributing income. These concepts have been coopted and
turned into symbols for reconcentrating wealth, income and power into
the hands of Western elites. And of course all the private cultural
institutions of imperialism amplify and propagate this Orwellian
disinformation. Contemporary cultural imperialism has debased the
language of liberation, converting it into symbols of reaction.
Cultural Terrorism: The Tyranny of Liberalism
Just as western state terrorism attempts to destroy social movements,
revolutionary governments and disarticulate civil society, economic
terrorism as practiced by the IMF and private bank consortia, destroy
local industries, erode public ownership and savages wage and salaried
household. Cultural terrorism is responsible for the physical
displacement of local cultural activities and artists. Cultural
terrorism by preying on the psychological weaknesses and deep anxieties
of vulnerable Third World peoples, particularly their sense of being
?backward?, ?traditional? and oppressed, projects new images of
?mobility? and ?free expression?, destroying old bonds to family and
community, while fastening new chains of arbitrary authority linked to
corporate power and commercial markets. The attacks on traditional
restraints and obligations is a mechanism by which the capitalist
market and state becomes the ultimate center of exclusive power.
Cultural imperialism in the name of ?self expression? tyrannizes Third
World people fearful of being labeled ?traditional?, seducing and
manipulating them by the phoney images of classless ?modernity?.
Cultural imperialism questions all pre-existing relations that are
obstacles to the one and only sacred modern deity: the market. Third
World peoples are entertained, coerced, titillated to be modern', to
submit to the demands of capitalist market to discard comfortable,
traditional, loose fitting clothes for ill fitting unsuitable tight
blue jeans.
Cultural imperialism functions best through colonized intermediaries,
cultural collaborators. The prototype imperial collaborators are the
upwardly mobile Third World professionals who imitate the style of
their patrons. These collaborators are servile to the West and arrogant
to their people, prototypical authoritarian personalities. Backed by
the banks and multinationals, they wield immense power through the
state and local mass media. Imitative of the West, they are rigid in
their conformity to the rules of unequal competition, opening their
country and peoples to savage exploitation in the name of free trade.
Among the prominent cultural collaborators are the institutional
intellectuals who deny class domination and imperial class warfare
behind the jargon of objective social science. They fetischize the
market as the absolute arbiter of good and evil. Behind the rhetoric of
'regional cooperation?, the conformist intellectuals attack working
class and national institutions which constrain capital movements ?
their supporters isolated and marginalized. Today throughout the Third
World, Western funded Third World intellectuals have embraced the
ideology of concertacion (class collaboration). The notion of
interdependence has replaced imperialism. And the unregulated world
market is presented as the only alternative for development. The irony
is that today as never before the ?market? has been least favorable to
the Third World. Never have the U.S., Europe and Japan been so
aggressive in exploiting the Third World. The cultural alienation of
the institutional intellectuals from the global realities is a
byproduct of the ascendancy of Western cultural imperialism. For those
critical intellectuals who refuse to join the celebration of the
market, who are outside of the official conference circuits, the
challenge is to once again return to the class and anti-imperialist
struggle.
North Americanization and the Myth of an International Culture
One of the great deceptions of our times is the notion of
'internationalization' of ideas, markets and movements. It has become
fashionable to evoke terms like ?globalization? or
?internationalization? to justify attacks on any or all forms of
solidarity, community, and/or social values. Under the guise of
?internationalism?, Europe and the U.S. have become dominant exporters
of cultural forms most conducive to depoliticizing and trivializing
everyday existence. The images of individual mobility, the ?self-make
person?, the emphasis on ?self-centered existence? (mass produced and
distributed by the U.S. mass media industry) now have become major
instruments in dominating the Third World.
Neo-liberalism continues to thrive not because it solves problems, but
because it serves the interest of the wealthy and powerful and
resonates among some sectors of the impoverished self- employed who
crowd the streets of the Third World. The North Americanization of
Third World cultures takes place with the blessing and support of the
national ruling classes because it contributes to stabilize their rule.
The new cultural norms ? the private over the public, the individual
over social, the sensational and violent over everyday struggles and
social realities ? all contribute to inculcating precisely the
egocentric values that undermine collective action. The culture of
images, of transitory experiences, of sexual conquest, works against
reflection, commitment and shared feelings of affection and solidarity.
The North Americanization of culture means focusing popular attention
on celebrities, personalities and private gossip ? not on social depth,
economic substance and the human condition. Cultural imperialism
distracts from power relation and erodes collective forms of social
action.
The media culture that glorifies the 'provisional' reflects the
rootlessnese of U.S. capitalism ? its power to hire and fire, to move
capital without regard for communities. The myth of ?freedom of
mobility? reflects the incapacity of people to establish and
consolidate community roots in the face of the shifting demands of
capital. North American culture glorifies transient, impersonal
relations as ?freedom? when in fact these conditions reflect the anomie
and bureaucratic subordination of a mass of individuals to the power of
corporate capital. North Americanization involves a wholesale assault
on traditions of solidarity in the name of modernity, attacks on class
loyalties in the name of individualism, the debasement of democracy
through massive media campaigns focusing on personalities.
The new cultural tyranny is rooted in the omnipresent repetitive
singular discourse of the market, of a homogenized culture of
consumption, of a debased electoral system. The new media tyranny
stands alongside the hierarchical state and economic institutions that
reach from the board roams of the international banks to the villages
in the Andes. The secret of the success of North American cultural
penetration of the Third World is its capacity to fashion fantasies to
escape from misery, that the very system of economic and military
domination generates. The essential ingredients of the new cultural
imperialism is the fusion of commercialism-sexuality-conservatism each
presented as idealized expressions of private needs, of individual
selfrealization. To some Third World people immersed in everyday dead
end jobs, struggles for everyday survival, in the midst of squalor and
degradation, the fantasies of North American media, like the
evangelist, portray ?something better?, a hope in a future better life
? or at least the vicarious pleasure of watching others enjoying it.
Impact of Cultural Imperialism
If we want to understand the absence of revolutionary transformation,
despite the maturing of revolutionary conditions, we must reconsider
the profound psychological impact of state violence, political terror
and the deep penetration of cultural/ideological values propagated by
the imperial countries and internalized by the oppressed peoples. The
state violence of the 1970's and early 1980's created long term, large
scale psychic damage ? fear of radical initiatives, distrust of
collectivities, a sense of impotence before established authorities ?
even as the same authorities are hated. Terror turned ?people inward?
toward private domains.
Subsequently, neo-liberal policies, a form of ?economic terrorism?,
resulted in the closing of factories, the abolition of legal protection
of labor, the growth of temporary work, the multiplication of low paid
individual enterprises. These policies further fragmented working class
and urban communities. In this context of fragmentation, distrust and
privatization, the cultural message of imperialism found fertile fields
to exploit vulnerable peoples' sensibilities, encouraging and deepening
personal alienation, selfcentered pursuits and individual competition
over ever scarce resources.
Cultural imperialism and the values it promotes has played a major
role in preventing exploited individuals from responding collectively
to their deteriorating conditions. The symbols, images and ideologies
that have spread to the Third World are major obstacles to the
conversion of class exploitation and growing immiseration into class
conscious bases for collective action. The great victory of imperialism
is not only the material profits, but its conquest of the inner space
of consciousness of the oppressed directly through the mass media and
indirectly through the capture (or surrender) of its intellectual and
political class. Insofar as a revival of mass revolutionary politics is
possible, it must begin with open warfare not only with the conditions
of exploitation but with culture that subjects its victims.
Limits of Cultural Imperialism
Against the pressures of cultural colonialism is the reality
principle: the personal experience of misery and exploitation imposed
by Western multinational banks, the police/military repression enforced
by U.S. supplied arms. Everyday realities which the escapist media can
never change. Within the consciousness of the Third World peoples there
is a constant struggle between the demon of individual escape
(cultivated by the mass media) and the intuitive knowledge that
collective action and responsibility is the only practical response. In
times of ascending social mobilizations, the virtue of solidarity takes
precedence; in times of defeat and decline, the demons of individual
rapacity are given license.
There are absolute limits in the capacity of cultural imperialism to
distract and mystify people beyond which popular rejection sets in. The
TV ?table of plenty? contrasts with the experience of the empty
kitchen; the amorous escapades of media personalities crash against a
houseful of crawling, crying hungry children. In the street
confrontations, Coca Cola becomes a molotov cocktail. The promise of
affluence becomes an affront to those who are perpetually denied.
Prolonged impoverishment and widespread decay erode the glamour and
appeal of the fantasies of the mass media.
The false promises of cultural imperialism become the objects of
bitter jokes relegated to another time and place.
The appeals of cultural imperialism are limited by the enduring ties
of collectivities ? local and regional ? which have their own values
and practices. Where class, racial, gender and ethnic bonds endure and
practices of collective action are strong, the influence of the mass
media are limited or rejected.
To the extent that preexisting cultures and traditions exist, they
form a ?closed circle? which integrates social and cultural practices
that look inward and downward, not upward and outward. In many
communities there is a clear rejection of the ?modernist?
developmental- individualist discourse associated with the supremacy of
the market. The historical roots for sustained solidarity and anti-
imperial movements are found in cohesive ethnic and occupational
communities; mining towns, fishing and forestry villages, industrial
concentrations in urban centers. Where work, community and class
converge with collective cultural traditions and practices, cultural
imperialism retreats.
The effectiveness of cultural imperialism does not depend merely on
its technical skills of manipulation, but on the capacity for the state
to brutalize and atomize the populace, to deprive it of its hopes and
collective faith in egalitarian societies.
Cultural liberation involves not merely ?empowering? individuals or
classes, but is dependent on the development of a socio-political force
capable of confronting the state terror that precedes cultural
conquest. Cultural autonomy depends on social power and social power is
perceived by the ruling classes as a threat to economic and state
power. Just as cultural struggle is rooted in values of autonomy,
community and solidarity which are necessary to create the
consciousness for social transformations, political and military power
is necessary to sustain the cultural bases for class and national
identities.
Most important, the Left must recreate a faith and vision of a new
society built around spiritual as well as material values: values of
beauty and not only work. Solidary linked to generosity and dignity.
Where modes of production are subordinated to efforts to strengthen and
deepen longstanding personal bonds and friendship.
Socialism must recognize the longings to be alone, to be intimate, as
well as to be social and collective. Above all, the new vision must
inspire people because it resonates with their desire not only to be
free from domination but free to create a meaningful personal life
informed by affective non-instrumental relations that transcend
everyday work even as it inspires people to continue to struggle.
Cultural imperialism thrives as much on novelty, transitory relations
and personal manipulation, but never on a vision of authentic, intimate
ties based on personal honesty, gender equality and social solidarity.
Personal images mask mass state killings, just as technocratic
rhetoric rationalize weapons of mass destruction ('intelligent bombs').
Cultural imperialism in the era of 'democracy' must falsify reality in
the imperial country to justify aggression ? by converting victims into
aggressors and aggressors into victims.
Hence in Panama the U.S. imperial state and mass media projected
Panama as a drug threat to young people in the U.S., as it dropped
bombs on working class communities in Panama.
The experiences of El Salvador and Guatemala in the 1980's is
illustrative.
Nicaraqua's Sandinista government in the 1980's and Chile under
Allende in the 1970's are emblematic.
The case of Uruguay and Argentina in the 1970's and 1980's under the
military regimes.
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