Capitalism requires continuous re-education of the popular classes through cultural struggle

Evidence

No history books used in public schools informed us about racial imperialism. Instead we were given romantic notions of the “new world,” the “American dream,” America as the great melting pot where all races come together as one. We were taught that Columbus discovered America; that “Indians” were scalphunters, killers of innocent women and children; that black people were enslaved because of the biblical curse of Ham, that God “himself” had decreed they would be hewers of wood, tillers of the field, and bringers of water. No one talked of Africa as the cradle of civilization, of the African and Asian people who came to America before Columbus. No one mentioned mass murders of Native Americans as genocide, or the rape of Native American and African women as terrorism. No one discussed slavery as a foundation for the growth of capitalism. No one described the forced breeding of white wives to increase the white population as sexist oppression. — bell hooks, Ain’t I a Woman_ Black Women and…, 352 (#exemplifies, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Capitalism reproduces itself by drawing civil and cultural life into conformity with its needs; Capitalism’s reproduction requires family, education, and media apparatuses; Mass media emerged with agrarian capitalism as culture itself became a commodity. (+24 more)

Related

• Capitalist development required the active re-education and moralization of working-class culture (similarity 0.86)
• Capitalist formation required the continuous re-education and cultural remaking of working people (similarity 0.80)
• American school curricula systematically erased imperialist, genocidal, and capitalist dimensions of national history (similarity 0.80)

Broader Connections

• Social reproduction of labor-power requires family, education, and cultural institutions #corroborates (0.75)
• Culture acquires class meaning only through present political struggle #expands (0.70)
• American school curricula systematically erased imperialist, genocidal, and capitalist dimensions of national history #exemplifies (0.65) — bell hooks, Ain’t I a Woman_ Black Women and…, 352
• Ideological change happens through class struggle, not through ideas alone #complicates (0.60)
• Capitalism failed to strip social life of historical consciousness embedded in culture #contradicts (0.60)
• Common sense can be worked upon to transform it into conscious class struggle #expands (0.50)
• Cultural change can follow institutional change rather than precede it #qualifies (0.50) — , The Rod and the Child, 2237