Economic and political systems pose exactly reversed governance problems
Evidence
The U.S. economy is a formally totalitarian system in which the actions of the vast majority (workers) are controlled by a small minority (owners and managers). Yet this totalitarian system is embedded in a formally democratic political system which promotes the norms— if not the practice— of equality, justice, and reciprocity. … For the economic system, these central problems are nearly exactly reversed. Making U.S. capitalism work involves: insuring the minimal par ticipation in decision-making by the majority (the workers); protecting a single minority (capitalists and managers) against the wills of a majority; and subjecting the majority to the maximal influence of this single unrepre sentative minority. A more dramatic contrast one would be hard pressed to discover. High school textbooks do not dwell on the discrepancy. — Samuel Bowles and Herbert Gintis, Schooling in Capitalist America, 577
Categorization
- XREF: Connects to the schooling-as-social-reproduction thesis that frames this whole Bowles & Gintis book, and echoes the hidden-curriculum argument the reader has built across earlier chapters. — connects to: Economic and political problems are never only about economics or politics