Social Class and Rebellion: The Role of Knowledge Production in Capitalist Society

Abstract

Since at least the Great Depression, the use of highly complex ideological control mechanisms to perpetuate an inherently dehumanizing global capitalist system, however crude and uncivilized, has been highly successful in maintaining basic structures of imperialist and neocolonialist power and keeping working-class / human rebellion at bay. However, there are times when the contradictions of capital, especially during times of crises, become so exaggerated that traditional forms of population control no longer serve their hegemonic functions. The current trend of global rebellion is arguably one of these times, when the frustration and anger of indigenous, settler-state, and formerly enslaved peoples burst to pieces normal relationships between the ruled (i.e., wage workers as well as those excluded from the treadmill of neoliberal production) and their often diverse rulers (i.e., capitalists and the governments that serve their elite interests). Because we are interested here in understanding and contributing to the current global movement (from Egypt, Libya, Syria, Greece, London, the United States to Venezuela, Peru, and Cuba) that, at its best, democratically subverts neoliberal capitalism, it is important to focus on the tenuous ideological role of knowledge production (i.e., compulsory schooling) in creating widespread consent for the accumulation of wealth through abstract labor.