David B. Shemano wrote: > Regarding cultural homogenization ... is it a result of capitalism or modern > communications? In other words, assuming the existence of modern > communications, why would there be less cultural homogenization if there was > global socialism? <
I haven't thought about this stuff very much, but here goes. Ignorance has never stopped me before, after all. To quote Socrates, the famous economist, all that I know is that I know nothing. Corrections are wanted. Modern communications definitely plays a role in homogenization of culture. BTW, homogenization goes hand-in-hand with cross-fertization. It's like the creation of a hybrid crop (either in the lab or in situ) that comes to dominate an ecological niche. It's not US popular music alone that dominates the world: Americanized "world music" and non-US adaptations of US music are also crucial parts of the process. As far as I can tell, the process is moving toward a situation where geographical and ethnic differences in music (etc.) are fading. Instead, we see much more rapid changes in styles over time, as part of an emerging mass-fad dominated world culture. (FWIW, I remember visiting Mexico and Guatemala in 1976. The music of Barry White (!!) was very popular in Mexico, while they were playing Paul McCartney's "stupid little love song" (dreck!) all over Guatemala. The local music seemed to be losing out.) Of course, modern communication is to a large extent a creation of capitalism (or rather, the capitalist cooptation of ideas developed by engineers and scientists). Capitalism is "technologically progressive," with both positive and negative effects. Second, as Michael Perelman pointed out, communication has long been dominated by capitalism, which has shaped it for its profit-seeking purposes. I haven't read it yet, but there's a book out there about how the corporations took over radio from churches, labor unions, community groups, etc. back in the 1920s. They used their government, with FCC legislation as the main tool. Both the market and the state are key parts of the capitalist process. Now, capitalism doesn't always lead to homogenization/hybridization: some profit from niche markets. But there is a major "winner-take-all" aspect to capitalist competition which lead to the domination of the media by a small number of networks. It's interesting that this still prevails in TV, even with cable in place: a lot (most?) of the cable networks are owned by the same companies that own the big 4 networks, while most of the rest play nothing but reruns or "reality" shows. Capitalism's development encourages economies of scale (and other advantages of bigness), which then encourages the concentration and centralization of capital. We (almost?) always end up with a oligopoly-dominated market with a "competitive fringe" of low-profit enterprises in the small niches. New venues (cable TV then, the Internet now) arise, presenting new competition for the established media. But then the established media move in and take over, absorb, the alternative media, creating corporate-bureaucratic Borg cubes. Alternatively, the alternative media (MTV, Google, etc.) rapidly begins to ape the mainstream. I'm so old (in Internet years) that I remember when people frowned on "crass commercialism" in e-mail, on web-pages, etc. Now it's the norm. Google's g-mail is hawking "Marxist T-shirts" over to the right of what I'm writing. In the end, it's not the domination of specific corporations (AOL-Time-Warner, anyone?) as much as the dominance of the huckster profits-at-any-cost mentality, joined at the pelvis to the bureaucratic imagineer mentality. The latter is the Disney term for the engineering of entertainment with focus groups and the like in mind. It applies to the process of making Big Pop music, too. It contrasts with music that's created by people who love music and are expressing their own personalities via creation. The accumulation of advantages (rich getting richer, etc.) that characterizes capitalism in general plays a role in different geographical areas and ethnic units. This produces uneven development, with some dominating others. For example, the last time I heard, (homogenized/hybridized) English was becoming the world language. The main backbone of this triumph is not the simplicity or beauty of the language. It can't be the simplicity (cf. spelling). It can't be the beauty, since English is pretty ugly compared to (say) Spanish. Rather, it is the fact that the world has been increasingly dominated by English-speaking empires (first the Brits, now the US). So even though the homogenization of popular music isn't simply a matter of the US music industry indoctrinating the world (and the world passively accepting their programming), the US definitely has the upper hand in the process. If some other language (Mandarin?) comes to dominate, it will be because of military, financial, and manufacturing prowess. Socialism has homogenizing tendencies. But they are different. Bureaucratic socialism (e.g., the late USSR) standardized a lot. But there was some recognition of "the right of nations to self-determination" (within limits set by the bureaucracy, so that secession was tabu, etc.), encouraging heterogeneity among the SSRs and autonomous regions. Perhaps this was part of a divide-and-rule strategy. What about democratic socialism? instead of the "English rules" attitude of current capitalism (in which the accumulation of advantages leads to monopoly), I think that socialism has a different model. I'm afraid to say that it's Esperanto. It's true that that language is in many ways an embarrassing application of Enlightenment thinking, with self-appointed smart people thinking up a language largely from whole cloth and then proposing it as a way to build world peace.[*] But one of the great things is that the idea is that _no currently-existing_ language should dominate the world. Instead, a language that belongs to no-one should be used. (It's true that Esperanto is a lot like Spanish and very different from Mandarin. That's a serious problem.) The language was seen as being accepted in a democratic way -- not in a capitalist-imperialist or bureaucratic-socialist way -- being accepted from below rather than imposed from above. Yeah, Esperanto is a total failure. But I that's not surprising. Esperanto is a somewhat socialist solution -- which is exactly what capitalism militates against. It goes against the grain of capitalism -- and of the rising dominance of English. On the other hand, the hegemony of English may promote the development of socialism in the future. If people can easily talk to each other, that promotes unity, democracy, and solidarity. [*] I recently heard that Israeli Hebrew is a largely artificial language, simplified (like Esperanto) with some basis in premodern Hebrew (like Esperanto's basis in Spanish). Like Esperanto, it's a language that no-one spoke beforehand. It has been a major success (in Israel, among Jews) because it was imposed from above as part of the Israeli ethnic-nationalist (Zionist) project: all business and political speech and writing was required to be in (modern) Hebrew, rather than in English, Yiddish, Ladino, etc. It helped build peace among the Israeli Jews -- though opposition to the "other" (Palestinians) and the manifest need to unify an ethnically fractious population was also crucial here. Modern Hebrew might be seen as a successful Esperanto, imposed in a (somewhat social-democratic) capitalist-colonialist way. -- Jim Devine / "Segui il tuo corso, e lascia dir le genti." (Go your own way and let people talk.) -- Karl, paraphrasing Dante.
