Does America Have Capitalist Stockholm Syndrome?

By Umair Haque

When I was a little boy — maybe six — I made a friend named Rick. An all-American golden boy, as athletic as he was whip-smart, all tousled blond hair and piercing blue eyes, and we met in an all-American way, too — in a knock-down, drag-out brawl, in the sweet spring Virginia mud, at the end of a football game, which my team had won, and his team had lost. Rick’s dad, separating us, gave us a stern moral talking to — moral fiber, boys!! — and after that, we became the best and oddest of companions, me this skinny, frail brown lost boy, and Rick the all American golden boy.

Fast forward a decade. We’re still friends. Only now I’m a punk with Soviet Doc Martens (which I wish I still had.) And every time Rick’s dad sees them he gives me another stern talking-to. “Son, you’re not a communist, are you?” No, I reply, laughing. I’m just a teenager. And then he extols, at great length, the many virtues of capitalism. Hard work! Responsibility! Manhood! And yet something strikes me as not quite right. It takes me a while, but one day I finally put my finger on it.

Rick’s dad isn’t a capitalist. He’s never been one. He’s just a middle manager at some midsize tech company — a government contractor of some kind. He’s never going to own the company. His income doesn’t come from capital. He’s wakes up in the morning to earn a wage, like anyone else. What gives?

I still talk to Rick’s dad. And having read some of my essays, he asks me, all over again: “son, you’re not a communist, are you?!” There he is. Still working more or less the same job. Never retired. He’s old, now. Living in that same old little house. He’s always just been another average wage-earner in the machine. There’s nothing wrong with that — except his infallible, unwearying, romanticized love of the system which failed him, never allowing him to retire, which made him work 14 hours a day to educate his kids, barely seeing them, which rarely allowed him even a vacation, which barely covers his healthcare bills. He never became a capitalist. He never had the slightest chance to — hence he’s still working. His capital income is pennies. He doesn’t own the company. But he’ll defend capitalism with his every breath. Don’t you think that’s strange? Funny? A little sad? I do.

And yet, I see Rick’s dad everywhere. Everytime I write an essay about economics here, up pops a veritable chorus telling me how wonderful capitalism is. It’s not just me — you can see the same thing at work everywhere, more or less, just read the comments (no! never read the comments!!)

The really strange thing about today is that most of the people who leap to capitalism’s defense fastest and most furiously…aren’t capitalists. And they never will be. They can’t be. Just 10% of America owns stocks, and even less owns bonds. Even less — maybe 1%, if that — make enough money from capital to call it their main income. And their incomes are shrinking, at a record pace. So the Rick’s dads of the world have never made enough money from capital income to live off it, and that’s why they’ll never really retire. They don’t send their kids to school with capital gains. They don’t pay for skyrocketing healthcare bills by liquidating trust funds. They’re just average wage-earning schmoes, like the rest of us. And yet despite the fact that they’re not capitalists and never will be, they’re also exactly the ones who defend capitalism most.

So the fiercest everyday defenders of capitalism in America are those who’ll never be capitalists— in fact, they seem to be those who are being exploited by capitalists. They’ll never be capitalists, in either the sense of ownership or income, since their already meager incomes are shrinking, so they own and make less, every year. What the? What gives? Shouldn’t they be the critics of capitalism?

Marx was wrong about many things. There’s no glorious communist revolution — and there probably won’t be. But he was right about many things, too. Capitalism has failed. And yet it has also produced what he called a “false consciousness.” That means, essentially, that capitalism — or more accurately, the capitalist values of self-interest, greed, and cruelty — captures the minds of the classes below it. They come to believe in capitalism as a substitute for religion, for a lack of spirituality, for faith, later thinkers, like Adorno, would say.

In Marxist terms, the Rick’s dads of the world are the “petite bourgeoisie” — at best. They might own a few stocks. Maybe a handful of bonds. But they’re not capitalists at all, in the sense of either owning companies, or making enough from ownership to live on. The real capitalists sit far, far above them. Who are they, in the American economy? Well, because the American economy is highly concentrated and monopolized now, they’re tiny in number. It’s people like Bezos and Zuck and all those dynasties, the Waltons and so on. The average American who defends capitalism is the furthest thing from a capitalist: he’s just another prole. And a downwardly mobile one, too, at that. How weird is that?

Do you see the kind of Stockholm Syndrome at work here? Let me make it clearer. Who are the biggest losers from capitalism over the last few decades? It’s white American men. Their life expectancy is falling. Their income is cratering. Their suicide rates are rising. They’re suffering what Angus Deaton, the renowned economists, calls “deaths of despair.” And yet they’re also the ones who defend capitalism most, tooth and nail — even while its sealing shut their coffins. Women don’t, minorities don’t, young people don’t — yet they haven’t lost nearly as much as middle-class white men have. Isn’t that strange? Bizarre? Gruesome?

How did Capitalism Stockholm Syndrome come to be? Probably because those middle class white men gained the most from capitalism, too. Once upon a time, they lived the dream. But then, as capitalism ran out of other people to exploit, it turned on them. The instant that segregation ended, American wages began to stagnate — both these things happened in 1971. Was that a coincidence? Or was it because American capitalism needed someone to prey on — and it didn’t care much, in the end, whether they were white or black, men or women, old or young? And yet, because they grew so attached to capitalism, now they seem unable to see the simple truth that it’s preyed on them, too. But attached in what way, precisely?

Stockholm Syndrome is a subtle thing. It doesn’t just mean people sympathize with their captors — it means that they internalize their values, to the point that their identities are remade, which is what Marx was trying to say, but perhaps didn’t have the language to. There’s Rick’s dad. He watches Fox News — he thinks, in a kind of ironic way, rolling his eyes at the more outrageous statements. But the message still seems to sink in. He pores over the Wall Street Journal every morning — as if he were the capitalist he never was, and he’ll never be. His identity seems to have been suffused into capitalism itself, and hence the moment that I try to question it, it’s as if I’m attacking him. Bang! Out pours the stern moral lecture on the virtues of capitalism. Isn’t that what all the Ricks’ Dads do, though? Their identity is inextricably woven into capitalism now — it’s part of them in an existential way, it seems. To question capitalism is to attack them — as providers, as men, as beings, as people, as husbands, as fathers.

So you can’t talk to the Rick’s Dads of the world with facts, reason, evidence, or logic. To say, “Italians and French people live five years longer thanAmericans!” is only to provoke disbelief and scorn and opprobrium. It just doesn’t work — because a very real sense, there is capitalism where a self should be. No capitalism — no self. But capitalism says that the self is only as worthy as it is wealthy — which is to say that is inherently worthless. Bang! The trap has sprung. Now the prisoner is trapped. He must forever try to regain the very self-worth, the sense of selfhood, that capitalism has denied him, through…more capitalism.

And that to me is one of the great tragedies of capitalism. Marx was right. Capitalism does produce a false consciousness. Those who’ll never be capitalists are exactly those who defend it most. The imploded middle classes — in Marxist terms, the upper proletariat and the petite bourgeoisie — these days, are capitalist’s staunchest and truest defenders. Not just because they “hope to be capitalists one day” — a cognitive cause. But because capitalism replaced their sense of self. They seem to be pushed to the edge of breakdown without it, unable to function at all as confident, optimistic, integral, empathic human beings with inherent self-worth, self-directedness, and self-knowledge. Remember Rick’s dad poring over the Journal, watching Fox News, and so on? First and last comes capitalism. Then comes everything else. Family, happiness, books, ideas, truth, beauty, life.

I still see Rick’s dad. Sometimes, we sit on the porch, and just take in the sweet Virginia air, watching the sun set over the little field in front of his house. The very same one Rick and I, all those years ago, used to laugh and roughhouse on. It’s the one thing he’s proudest of. Who am I to tell him how to live? I sip my drink quietly. The sun sets. He bid me good night. Old now, he tires easily. It’s going to be another long day at the office tomorrow.