Constructs and Roles of Culture in National and Other Social Formations and Imperial Soft-Power Projections

ABSTRACT

This paper discusses the imperative for Marxist Theory ←→ Praxis to develop and respond to/counter ongoing even urgent imperial efforts to develop scientific approaches to the study of the nature and evolution of human consciousness, cognition, learning, perception, susceptibility to soft and hard forms of power, propaganda and imperial social systems engineering. Specifically how do shifting socio-historical-economic-political definitions, constructs and realities of culture, tribe, nation, ethnicity, race, nationality, interpenetrate with and shape human cognition, perception, prejudices, and class consciousness as central to but not all of overall consciousness? How are these constructs used in concrete ways to foster imperial penetrations, co-optations, control and subversion? What are some emerging issues and areas in need of research as well as concrete ways that constructs like culture can be and are being used to promote false consciousness, reactionary tribalism and forms of “patriotism,” exceptionalism, triumphalism and neo-Cold War posturing. What are the implications of sub-cultures within alleged broader homogenous national cultures, imperial promotion of forms of supposed exceptionalism and triumphalism trumping class-based cultures and their inherent antagonisms vs. socialist social formations intent on reducing class-based cultures and their antagonisms with no imperatives or intent for domination and hegemony?

KEYWORDS:

• Culture
• class
• cognition
• imperialism
• social formations

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes on Contributor

James M. Craven (Blackfoot Indian name: Oomahkohkiaaiipooyii) was a retired professor of economics and geography at the Clark College. He has published on political economy, international law on genocide and nation, economic geography and imperialism.

Notes

1 See Bekerman’s (1983, ix) overview-summary of misuses-misinterpretations of Marx: (a) “The drive to criticize and clarify has had the result that Marx has less been ‘understood’ than ‘used’” … “He has been interpreted rather less through his own works than an imputed relation to the thought systems and influential ideas of our own time”; (b) “critics have won in breadth what they have lost in depth”; (c) “In their correspondence Marx and Engels always used the expression ‘Marxist’ in inverted commas. The statement ‘All I know is that I am not a Marxist’ was not written down by Marx himself [quoted by Engels in 1882 several times as Marx’s response to some self-styled French versions of ‘Marxism’]”; (d) “There is in Marx and Engels’ works a marked scruple concerning the use of the word ‘Marxism.’ For example, Engels wrote ‘The Marxist Congress’ and immediately commented ‘I use this term for brevity.’”

2 Bottomore et al. (1983, 109) present an excellent overview of uses of concept of “culture” by Marxists: (a) “The concept has often been used in ways particularly repellent to most Marxists, whether to defend the notion of ‘art for art’s sake’, or, in a very different use of the term, to reject a materialist approach in anthropology”; (b) “questions of culture and ideology have been so central to Western Marxism that some writers have identified a distinct trend of ‘culturalist Marxism’”; (c) “two uses of the term culture which can be taken as the extreme poles of its use … the aesthetic domain of, in particular, ART and LITERATURE and the relations between them” (emphasis in the original); (d) “At the other end of the spectrum are anthropological uses of the term to denote the ‘whole way of life’ of a society, often construed in an idealist way as founded upon meanings, values and so on.”

3 When used in the context of “cultural exchanges” between peoples, “culture,” partly exchanged in literature by Chinese and Russian peoples, as basically the totality (not only “aesthetics” or amorphous “life and folkways”) of that which been created and/or appropriated by a identified group and its members; that members identify and/or are identified by others with, as defining, giving “identity” and/or differentiating that group from others (Xi 2014, 304, 323, 328–339, 357–376); In the context of “cultural revolution” and “cutting-edge basic research,” Xi also presents a combined Marxist Philosophy/Critical Scientific Thinking (MP/CST)–Dialectical Historical Materialism/Political Economy (DHM/PE)–Marxist Scientific Socialism (MSS) approach, the three core pillars of Marxism, but with definite “Chinese Characteristics.” In this approach “culture” might be seen to be like water to the fish; that the fish swims and is immersed in, potentially affecting the dynamic water it swims in; “culture” created, produced, carried, challenged and changed by human beings, is that multi-dimensional totality (of the national and other social formations they are created by and throughout) created by or in the name of members of a group, distinguishing that group from others, about which people have varying levels of consciousness and false consciousness, that is historically conditioned, that shapes and mediates, influences human perception, cognition, choices, behaviors and more (Xi 2014, 103, 139, 150, 479, 494).

4 Marx used the term “mode of production” as: historical age or epoch; characteristic historically-conditioned system of economic base (forces and relations of production, technology, modes of surplus production and expropriation) and superstructure (politico-legal; socio-cultural; historical-geographical institutions, relations) (Bottomore et al. 1983, 335–337).

5 Term used sparingly by Marx interchangeably with “society” as in “bourgeois” or “feudal” social formations or society. This is a remarkable distinction and fully consistent with the MP/CST–DHM/PE–MSS pillars of Marxism: each social formation or society, and elements of its culture, as a dynamic complex system of interacting sub-systems/cultures, modes of production (past historical systems or remnants of them and embryonic forms of emerging ones, only one of which is dominant and labels the overall social formation) as truly or dominantly Primitive Communal, Slave, Feudal, Capitalist or building Socialism using some controlled capitalism, but allowing for possibility of faux socialism to build and/or return to capitalism; true socialism is about which class holds state power via representation and true allegiances and actions of the representatives (Bottomore et al. 1983, 441).

6 Aristotle distinguished three forms or kinds of rhetoric or persuasion or argument: Deliberative (to urge a position on an issue or action on a proposal); Judicial (to argue justice or injustice of a policy or act); and Epideictic (ceremonial, arguing praise or blame means “fit for display” in Greek “Epideiktikos”). Culture, by both Marxist and non-Marxist scholars, has often been defined a priori, deductively, in rhetorical and abstract, or in epideictic, terms. An epideictic “definition” of something is to “define” something as a composite of supposed separately-listed, core, differentiating, unique, and defining features or aspects of the phenomenon, construct or thing—culture—being defined. These asserted, core and defining features, ostensibly identify and differentiate “culture” from something else, perhaps like it but not it. These supposed, core and defining features, collectively (no theories of interactions of these features) supposedly sum-up that which is unique about, and thus why there is a separate word for, whatever, say culture, that is being defined. This is sort of like at a ceremony summing up the supposed “career-defining” contributions of someone retiring: “summing up” and therefore “defining” the phenomenon—the retiring person’s career—being defined. This is like defining an elephant, in the abstract, to a blind person, from supposed defining and differentiating features of an elephant like “a large animal having a trunk, tusks, thick legs, etc.” Same with the word “culture,” how do you arrive at a general and all-inclusive definition of a word used so often, commonly, and among so many people from diverse cultures and in such diverse ways?

7 Marxist theory and some of the summing up of the praxis of Marxists, has been generally by intellectuals, mostly academics, from similar class, strata, national, ethnic, racial and similar backgrounds and cultures, with little direct contact with the real-world subjects of their research and theory development; thus like a fish immersed in water not cognizant of the existence and nature of water until for a brief moment forced out of it, culture is a totality and is pervasive and immersive on anyone purporting to write about it or analyze it from a perspective academic and a priori detachment and supposed absolute standards of science and rationality irrespective of their own places and roles and interests within that system, and culture by nature also dynamic as well as immersive and pervasive.

8 From Lewis Carroll (1872, 72): “When I use a word,” Humpty Dumpty said in a rather scornful tone, “it means just what I choose it to mean neither more nor less.” “The question is,” said Alice, “whether you can make words mean so many different things.” “The question is,” said Humpty Dumpty, “which is to be master—that’s all.” The argument made that the core axiom of dialectics is everything is in process so are definitions, as on one hand A either is or is not A for purposes of quantification and math as well as deductive logic A = B = C ergo A = C; on the other hand, A is in process to becoming non-A like a child is in process to become an adolescent to adult to elder and when and how do the transformations occur?

9 As early as 1907 Louis Boudin, in his The Theoretical System of Karl Marx, noted that work in cognitive psychology (about the unconscious structuring the conscious, etc. that was going on from the work of Freud) was being used to promote rank idealism, that there is no independent or objective reality outside of consciousness of it; that perception is the only reality as reality is so dynamic it changes before can be analyzed (Boudin 1967, 25). But it does show we need to be increasingly mindful of just how constrained, programmed, resistant to change and the unknown we humans really are and through what kinds of constraints, we humans are limited by, in the areas of cognition, reason, logic, science, and even overall “rationality.”

10 Among the most comprehensive and well researched book on the history and evolution and sources of tradecraft, instruments, theories and roles of hard and cultural soft-power in US irregular, undeclared wars and warfare from Truman to Obama; Recruits to CIA and FBI report they are told their core “mission” is not the oath they took to “uphold, defend and protect the US Constitution against all enemies foreign and domestic,” but to “fight communism,” no mention of “fascism” or “terrorism.” Immigrants from China are asked if they or any family members of the Communist Party, but nothing about memberships in any fascist cults like Falun Gong. Immigrants claiming to be refugees from socialist regimes are automatically classified as “political refugees,” Cubans reaching US soil automatically given political refugee status; whereas refugees from fascist regimes, some of them with death squads trained by US forces and remnants of dirty wars in the 1980s now criminal gangs, are classified “economic migrants” even as treaties say political refugee status a matter of facts on the ground and law, not ideological nature of regimes claimed refugee from or seeking to go to (Hancock and Wexler 2014).

11 In the West, particularly in the United States, all sorts of new approaches and frontiers of “Brain Science” are being explored (by neurobiologists, cognitive psychologists, experimental psychologists, anthropologists, economists and biochemists), with the intent of finding new, more effective and more subliminal neuro-physiological mechanisms that can be used for more effective persuasion, mind control, interrogation, indoctrination, propaganda, marketing, political campaigns and “manufactured consent.” They are looking for both the universal and culturally-specific neuro structures, connections (synapses) triggers and physiological responses associated with various stimuli (colors, patterns, words, ideas, images, humor, etc.), as they typically, and often subliminally excite or inhibit various neuro structures, chemicals (e.g., nor epinephrine, dopamine, serotonin, acetylcholine, histamine), and processes associated with pleasure, pain, fear, familiarity, fight-or-flight, and other responses (e.g., cortico-plasticity, neurogenesis, neural differentiation).Their work is increasingly being incorporated into marketing, design and content of educational hardware and software, textbooks, political campaigns. For an overview see Gardner (2009), Shermer (2004, 2008), and Ariely (2009).

12 Freedom of religion is protected by the Constitution of China; but cult practices and intentions are not and for good reasons. Although some mainstream religions like Roman Catholicism have powerful cults like “Opus Dei” within them, mainstream religions can be differentiated from cults in that typically cults, unlike or more than the mainstream religious denominations: (a) have closed and layered dogma with followers allowed to know true dogma and intentions of the cult only in stages according to how trusted the followers are; (b) covert, coercive and deceptive recruitment practices; (c) internal controls for monitoring and deterring exits of members; (d) various forms of calculated covert and overt mind control and programming; (e) hegemonic intentions and intolerance for the very levels of diversity of thought and religious pluralism that they demand for themselves; (f) coerced isolation from family members and friends not in the cult; (g) covert rituals and practices and retribution against those who reveal them; (h) hidden agenda and ultimate objectives known only to trusted insiders; (i) a charismatic and autocratic leader with absolute, unquestioned and unquestionable authority; (j) clandestine and covert ties to and used by the US and other intelligence services.