4 ms·

> As Antonio Gramsci understood, rules achieve hegemonic domination when they are able to cloak their coercion with the consent of the ruled. If something has

by slibhb 5y ago

> As Antonio Gramsci understood, rules achieve hegemonic domination when they are able to cloak their coercion with the consent of the ruled. If something has the consent of the ruled, can it be coercive? If it can, what even is consent?

revolvingocelot 5y ago
The "coercion" is cloaked with the "consent of the ruled". It's not actually the consent of the ruled, it is coercion wearing a disguise. If a 10,000-strong anti-skub march happens in my town, but the nightly news doesn't mention it at all and instead airs man-on-the-street interviews with smiling middle-class people who all quite like skub, what just happened? Are the populace for or against skub? It doesn't really matter if any anti-skub organizations can be made to appear to be ineffectual or aberrant or insane or invisible.
- slibhb 5y ago
  Your example is straightforward cocercion, it's not what Gramsci was talking about. He argued that culture and religion instill bourgeois values. It's very tricky to tell people that their desires, beliefs, culture, and religion are merely ruses to further domination. It blurs the line between coercion and consent. It seems to suggest, paradoxically, that people can only consent to things that they ought to consent to, according to the beliefs of the person making the judgement (in this case a Marxist intellectual).
  - mc32 5y ago
    So every *ism is coercion. Capitalism, Communism, Socialism, Buddhism, etc., except it’s not coercion if you’re looking inwardly, I guess.
  - revolvingocelot 5y ago
    >Your example is straightforward cocercion Why do you think that? Keep reading the article. The West doesn't really need Fear (except against whistleblowers etc), but uses Friction and Flooding extremely effectively. The "mysterious" coordination of the increasingly-consolidated media helps provide Friction against organizing effectively against skub, and a steady insistent Flood of pro-skub messaging ensures those without much investment in skub either way suffer the mere-exposure effect and think skub is normal (those man-on-the-street interviews, skub showing up in movies and TV, ads for skub, weirdly patriotic messaging about skub). >It seems to suggest, paradoxically, that people can only consent to things that they ought to consent to, according to the beliefs of the person making the judgement (in this case a Marxist intellectual). I think it suggests that people should make decisions based on unadulterated information, rather than that which is spoon-fed to them by authoritarians. Did you read the rest of the article? "Marxist" is an analytical lens, not indicative of someone who wants to give your toothbrush to the revolution.
    - slibhb 5y ago
      There's no such thing as unadulterated information. You're making the same mistake as Gramsci. You decide what the correct beliefs are and the fact that other people don't have those beliefs is evidence of their coercion.
      - revolvingocelot 5y ago
        >You decide what the correct beliefs are and the fact that other people don't have those beliefs is evidence of their coercion. No, the subjects of the article decide that. I'm just some asshole commenting on it. Relatedly, it's weird that you're directly asserting that I'm doing something that I'm not doing -- you've decided it, thus it is so. You'd think that you could quote the bit where I'm deciding what the correct beliefs are. I suspect you're inferring it from my suggestion that an increasingly-consolidated mass media decides what's normal and presents it to us. If so, I have a short educational video [0] on the topic. [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZggCipbiHwE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZggCipbiHwE
        slibhb 5y ago
        I don't care whether the argument is yours or the article's, I'm addressing the argument.
        revolvingocelot 5y ago
        > I don't care whether the argument is yours or the article's, I'm addressing the argument Sure, by baselessly asserting that I, or Gramsci, >>decide what the correct beliefs are and the fact that other people don't have those beliefs is evidence of their coercion. Have I missed something? You wrote that "[i]t's very tricky to tell people that their desires, beliefs, culture, and religion are merely ruses to further domination", which suggests that I, or Gramsci, make that argument. I don't think I did; he doesn't seem to be. Should I infer that the three Fs outlined again and again in the article are in fact the desires, beliefs, culture, and religion of the people being oppressed?
- lindseymysse 5y ago
  Hey, this reminds me of all the anti-war marches I did in the 2000's and 2010's!
hirundo 5y ago
There have been times and places where slavery had majority consent, even considering the opinions of the slaves. In all of those cases, I would say that the slavery was still coercive. So yes, you can have the consent of at least the majority of the ruled and still be coercive. Almost nothing wins the consent of everyone, so almost any rule is coercive to someone.
- judge2020 5y ago
  The real thing to gauge is human suffering, which isn’t easy to measure so it often isn’t measured.
  - bobthechef 5y ago
    The real thing to look at is moral principle rooted in the natural law. This is why tradition is important. It is a dialogue occurring through history done in humble acknowledgment that we cannot "start from scratch" and do better just like that.
mostertoaster 5y ago
Our consent is cloaked because even when we democratically elect a ruler, they then say see we have the consent of the people to do xyz, even though they were elected saying they would do abc. Most people just say well next time I’ll elect my other side and they’ll do abc that I would consent to. And the process repeats. Still in some sense if there is true consent by an individual then it isn’t necessarily coercive though it could be manipulative. Also the consent of two saying I don’t mind if you take/abuse from the one can be totalitarian. If we think Trump was bad, I think people might be horrified at how hard the pendulum swings back the other way. Many people hate much of the policies going on under Biden (even if just out of partisan reasons and not principles), and one party acting like they can do whatever they want because they have the presidency and a tie in a senate doesn’t change there are like 50 million people who feel like they’re being “oppressed”. Just as dubya seemed less bad once we had Trump, the next guy might make Trump look the same in comparison. All done with “consent of the ruled”
- mistermann 5y ago
  > Our consent is cloaked because even when we democratically elect a ruler, they then say see we have the consent of the people to do xyz, even though they were elected saying they would do abc. > Most people just say well next time I’ll elect my other side and they’ll do abc that I would consent to. And the process repeats. An interesting aspect of this is: full blown direct democracy is one thing, but simple finer grained continuous high quality polling of public sentiment (however imperfect) is rarely discussed, and isn't particularly technically challenging.
  - mostertoaster 5y ago
    That would probably be an improvement over how things go now. The issue is even if public sentiment across a nation is a strong majority like 60%, 40% is still a huge number of people, and different people have somewhat different values depending on where they are. I feel like local communities this would work well, since a majority overriding a minority might not be as egregious as say a majority of rural folk having their will done over city folk and vice versa. What I wish we could do is let’s say the federal government says in accordance with majority sentiment, masks are required for children in school. The state of Texas though has the ability to override it or leave it in place, but then the city of Austin could then override what Texas overruled and so on. I don’t know something where the will of more people is being followed.
pc86 5y ago
It can still be unethnical to have policies and laws that have 50.001% approval. I agree though that I think the word "coercive" here is a bit confusing.
- shadowgovt 5y ago
  This is the perpetual pull between "right" being the will of the people, "right" being the laws we set for ourselves that are placed outside the people's direct control by appeal to some higher ideal (such as a Constitutional government that provides authority to reject laws because they do not align to that Constitution), and "right" being a pure, objective correctness, justice, etc. (that may or may not actually exist). Every society eventually wrestles with these things.
csomar 5y ago
A possible analogue: a Ponzi-scheme. The actors do consent (by lack of understanding of how the scheme works), but the outcome is against their expectations. Of course, the guys running the scheme have ways to explain their shortfall (the governments/banks don't want you to get rich) and people do fall for/believe that.
- Animats 5y ago
  a Ponzi-scheme. The actors do consent Yes. SEC staff have had to face angry haters after shutting down Ponzi schemes. Not from the people running them. From the suckers, who were hoping that if it went on a little longer, they'd come out ahead.
PontifexMinimus 5y ago
If it is consent, then it is manufactured consent.
dabbledash 5y ago
Yes, because an action against a minority by a majority can be coercive. I think American history demonstrates this pretty clearly.

by slibhb 5y ago

revolvingocelot 5y ago

The "coercion" is cloaked with the "consent of the ruled". It's not actually the consent of the ruled, it is coercion wearing a disguise. If a 10,000-strong anti-skub march happens in my town, but the nightly news doesn't mention it at all and instead airs man-on-the-street interviews with smiling middle-class people who all quite like skub, what just happened? Are the populace for or against skub? It doesn't really matter if any anti-skub organizations can be made to appear to be ineffectual or aberrant or insane or invisible.

slibhb 5y ago
Your example is straightforward cocercion, it's not what Gramsci was talking about. He argued that culture and religion instill bourgeois values. It's very tricky to tell people that their desires, beliefs, culture, and religion are merely ruses to further domination. It blurs the line between coercion and consent. It seems to suggest, paradoxically, that people can only consent to things that they ought to consent to, according to the beliefs of the person making the judgement (in this case a Marxist intellectual).
- mc32 5y ago
  So every *ism is coercion. Capitalism, Communism, Socialism, Buddhism, etc., except it’s not coercion if you’re looking inwardly, I guess.
- revolvingocelot 5y ago
  >Your example is straightforward cocercion Why do you think that? Keep reading the article. The West doesn't really need Fear (except against whistleblowers etc), but uses Friction and Flooding extremely effectively. The "mysterious" coordination of the increasingly-consolidated media helps provide Friction against organizing effectively against skub, and a steady insistent Flood of pro-skub messaging ensures those without much investment in skub either way suffer the mere-exposure effect and think skub is normal (those man-on-the-street interviews, skub showing up in movies and TV, ads for skub, weirdly patriotic messaging about skub). >It seems to suggest, paradoxically, that people can only consent to things that they ought to consent to, according to the beliefs of the person making the judgement (in this case a Marxist intellectual). I think it suggests that people should make decisions based on unadulterated information, rather than that which is spoon-fed to them by authoritarians. Did you read the rest of the article? "Marxist" is an analytical lens, not indicative of someone who wants to give your toothbrush to the revolution.
  - slibhb 5y ago
    There's no such thing as unadulterated information. You're making the same mistake as Gramsci. You decide what the correct beliefs are and the fact that other people don't have those beliefs is evidence of their coercion.
    - revolvingocelot 5y ago
      >You decide what the correct beliefs are and the fact that other people don't have those beliefs is evidence of their coercion. No, the subjects of the article decide that. I'm just some asshole commenting on it. Relatedly, it's weird that you're directly asserting that I'm doing something that I'm not doing -- you've decided it, thus it is so. You'd think that you could quote the bit where I'm deciding what the correct beliefs are. I suspect you're inferring it from my suggestion that an increasingly-consolidated mass media decides what's normal and presents it to us. If so, I have a short educational video [0] on the topic. [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZggCipbiHwE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZggCipbiHwE
      - slibhb 5y ago
        I don't care whether the argument is yours or the article's, I'm addressing the argument.
        revolvingocelot 5y ago
        > I don't care whether the argument is yours or the article's, I'm addressing the argument Sure, by baselessly asserting that I, or Gramsci, >>decide what the correct beliefs are and the fact that other people don't have those beliefs is evidence of their coercion. Have I missed something? You wrote that "[i]t's very tricky to tell people that their desires, beliefs, culture, and religion are merely ruses to further domination", which suggests that I, or Gramsci, make that argument. I don't think I did; he doesn't seem to be. Should I infer that the three Fs outlined again and again in the article are in fact the desires, beliefs, culture, and religion of the people being oppressed?
lindseymysse 5y ago
Hey, this reminds me of all the anti-war marches I did in the 2000's and 2010's!

hirundo 5y ago

There have been times and places where slavery had majority consent, even considering the opinions of the slaves. In all of those cases, I would say that the slavery was still coercive. So yes, you can have the consent of at least the majority of the ruled and still be coercive. Almost nothing wins the consent of everyone, so almost any rule is coercive to someone.

judge2020 5y ago
The real thing to gauge is human suffering, which isn’t easy to measure so it often isn’t measured.
- bobthechef 5y ago
  The real thing to look at is moral principle rooted in the natural law. This is why tradition is important. It is a dialogue occurring through history done in humble acknowledgment that we cannot "start from scratch" and do better just like that.

mostertoaster 5y ago

Our consent is cloaked because even when we democratically elect a ruler, they then say see we have the consent of the people to do xyz, even though they were elected saying they would do abc. Most people just say well next time I’ll elect my other side and they’ll do abc that I would consent to. And the process repeats. Still in some sense if there is true consent by an individual then it isn’t necessarily coercive though it could be manipulative. Also the consent of two saying I don’t mind if you take/abuse from the one can be totalitarian. If we think Trump was bad, I think people might be horrified at how hard the pendulum swings back the other way. Many people hate much of the policies going on under Biden (even if just out of partisan reasons and not principles), and one party acting like they can do whatever they want because they have the presidency and a tie in a senate doesn’t change there are like 50 million people who feel like they’re being “oppressed”. Just as dubya seemed less bad once we had Trump, the next guy might make Trump look the same in comparison. All done with “consent of the ruled”

mistermann 5y ago
> Our consent is cloaked because even when we democratically elect a ruler, they then say see we have the consent of the people to do xyz, even though they were elected saying they would do abc. > Most people just say well next time I’ll elect my other side and they’ll do abc that I would consent to. And the process repeats. An interesting aspect of this is: full blown direct democracy is one thing, but simple finer grained continuous high quality polling of public sentiment (however imperfect) is rarely discussed, and isn't particularly technically challenging.
- mostertoaster 5y ago
  That would probably be an improvement over how things go now. The issue is even if public sentiment across a nation is a strong majority like 60%, 40% is still a huge number of people, and different people have somewhat different values depending on where they are. I feel like local communities this would work well, since a majority overriding a minority might not be as egregious as say a majority of rural folk having their will done over city folk and vice versa. What I wish we could do is let’s say the federal government says in accordance with majority sentiment, masks are required for children in school. The state of Texas though has the ability to override it or leave it in place, but then the city of Austin could then override what Texas overruled and so on. I don’t know something where the will of more people is being followed.

pc86 5y ago

It can still be unethnical to have policies and laws that have 50.001% approval. I agree though that I think the word "coercive" here is a bit confusing.

shadowgovt 5y ago
This is the perpetual pull between "right" being the will of the people, "right" being the laws we set for ourselves that are placed outside the people's direct control by appeal to some higher ideal (such as a Constitutional government that provides authority to reject laws because they do not align to that Constitution), and "right" being a pure, objective correctness, justice, etc. (that may or may not actually exist). Every society eventually wrestles with these things.

csomar 5y ago

A possible analogue: a Ponzi-scheme. The actors do consent (by lack of understanding of how the scheme works), but the outcome is against their expectations. Of course, the guys running the scheme have ways to explain their shortfall (the governments/banks don't want you to get rich) and people do fall for/believe that.

Animats 5y ago
a Ponzi-scheme. The actors do consent Yes. SEC staff have had to face angry haters after shutting down Ponzi schemes. Not from the people running them. From the suckers, who were hoping that if it went on a little longer, they'd come out ahead.

PontifexMinimus 5y ago

If it is consent, then it is manufactured consent.

dabbledash 5y ago

Yes, because an action against a minority by a majority can be coercive. I think American history demonstrates this pretty clearly.