Ideology, Hegemony and GDP
The power of the zeitgeist
‘Ideology’ is the imaginary relationship to a real situation. In common usage, it’s what the other person has, especially when systematically distorting the facts.
Ideology is a necessary feature of cognition. Imagine there is a real situation, that cannot be denied, but is too big for any individual to know in full, and so we must create our understanding by way of an act of the imagination.
We all have an ideology, and this is a good thing. So much information pours into the mind that some kind of personal organising system is necessary to make sense of things in ways that allow one to decide and to act.
Worldview, philosophy, religion. These are all synonyms for ideology. So is science although it’s the different one, by way of perpetual crosschecking with reality tests. Its continuous sharpening the focus that surely helps explain, in a coherent and useful way, as much of the blooming buzzing rush of the world as possible.
Here’s another definiton. A definition of ‘hegemony’:
The Gini coefficient was devised by the Italian sociologist Corrado Gini in 1912. It is a measure of income or wealth disparity in a population.
It is usually expressed as a fraction between 0 and 1. It is easy to understand because 0 is the coefficient if everyone owned an equal amount of everything, while 1 would be if one person owned everything and everyone else nothing.
In the mid 21st century, countries with a low coefficient, like the social democracies, are generally a bit below 0.3. Highly unequal countries are a bit above 0.6. The US and China and many other countries have seen their Gini coefficient shoot up in the neoliberal era (‘79/’80 to present) from 0.3 or 0.4 up to 0.5 or 0.6. And this with barely a squeak from the people losing the most in this increase in inequality.
Indeed many of those harmed often voted for politicians who increased their relative impoverishment. Thus the power of hegemony.
Professionals, managers and university graduates now comprise the bulk of the progressive forces in society, while the lower middle classes and working classes have been sucked into the orbit of right populist movements that is inexplicably siding with movements and politicians that make them poorer. — Dan Evans, A Nation of Shopkeepers
Thinking that the Gini coefficient alone will describe the situation would be succumbing to monocausotaxophilia: the love of single ideas that explain everything, one of humanity’s most common cognitive errors. For instance, the Gini figures for Bangladesh and for Holland are nearly the same at 0.31 but the average annual income in Bangladesh is about $2,000 while in Holland it’s $50,000.
The three richest people in the world possess more financial assets than all the people in the 48 poorest countries added together. The wealthiest 1% of the human population owns more than the bottom 70%.
The 2 billion poorest people on the planet still lack access to basics like toilets, housing, food, healthcare, education and so on. These disparities in wealth have been increasing since 1980 to the present. Thus the inequality in our age.
These ‘human’ statistics try to argue for better systems against the emotionless GDP. However, it’s the structure of feeling in our time; the zeitgeist. We can’t think in anything but economic terms. Our ethics must be quantified and rated for the effect that our actions have on GDP.
This is the hegemony. This is what must be broken.
GDP consists of a combination of consumption plus private investments plus government spending plus exports minus imports. Criticisms of GDP are many. It includes destructive activities as positive economic numbers, and excludes many kinds of negative externalities, as well as issues of health, social reproduction, and citizen satisfaction.
Is GDP the only measure we can agree on? Other indexes try to come to grips with this issue:
The Genuine Progress Indicator, which uses 26 different variables to determine its single index number.
The UN’s Human Development Index, which combines life expectancy, education levels and gross national income per capita (the UN later introduced the inequality-adjusted HDI).
The UN’s Inclusive Wealth Report, which combines manufactured capital, human capital, natural capital, adjusted by factors including carbon emissions.
The Planet Index, created by the New Economic Forum. It combines well-being as reported by citizens, life expectancy and inequality of outcomes, divided by ecological footprint. By this measure the US scores 20.1 out of 100 and comes in 108th out of 140 countries rated.
The Food Sustainability Index formulated by Barilla Center for Food and Nutrition, which uses 58 metrics to measure food security, welfare, and ecological sustainability.
The Ecological Footprint, as developed by the Global Footprint Network, which estimates how much land it would take to sustainably support the lifestyle of a town or country. An amount nearly always larger by considerable margins than the political entities being evaluated.
Bhutan’s famous Gross National Happiness, which uses 33 metrics to measure what its name suggests in quantitative terms.
Neoliberalism put us here. The widening wealth inequality since ‘79/’80. It heralded the era of the individual. Collectivism was eradicated. Capitalism reigned supreme.
Its success is reserved for the very few. Top 1% is generous. I would argue it’s the top 0.1%. This system continues to immiserate the vast majority of populations including the educated middle class in western societies. The professional managerial class experiencing downward mobility.
But things are changing. 15 years of near-zero growth in the UK, public services decimated and bankrupt councils. Factor in the realisation by almost everyone that the system is rigged in favour of the asset-owning class and it can clearly be seen why people say capitalism is dead.
Because it’s just not working for a staggering amount of people.
Note: much of the content of this article is inspired by and quoted from Kim Stanley Robinson’s The Ministry for the Future.
