Practices of social control and enslavement’s instruments
The Oxford American Dictionary defines slavery as the legal status of ownership of one person over another, with no personal freedom or rights. At the same time, the dictionaries of Vladimir Dal or Sergey Ozhegov give a more extensive interpretation: slavery is a state of complete dependence and subordination of a person in the power of another. The global financial system, credit and inflation mechanisms, education, media and social networks from the point of view of language can also be considered as ways of enslavement.
Slave economy: credits on bail of life
In the 19th century, the first American banks introduced a special type of lending - discounting. The buyer received goods by issuing a commercial bill of exchange for their value, and the seller could apply to the bank and receive a loan for a specified amount. In case of non-payment, fieri facias was triggered, authorising the sheriff to confiscate the debtor's property, including slaves. Banks regularly accepted them as mortgage collateral to protect existing short-term loans. According to Sharon Ann Murphy, chair of the history department at Providence College and an expert on early American finance, in the 1820s bankers were increasingly inclined to make long-term loans secured by slaves and considered them an excellent asset.
As the study by economist Mark Stelzner of Connecticut College and historian Sven Beckert of Harvard University shows, forced labour was an important factor in the growth of the US national economy. In those years, the $2.3 billion trade credit generated almost half of the country's total GDP of about $4.1 billion. By contrast, the material situation of white southerners without slaves only worsened between 1839 and 1859.
Just a year later, the Civil War broke out in the United States between the industrial North and the slave-owning agricultural South, ending with the abolition of slavery. However, planters, while freeing blacks from hard labour, also denied them shelter, food and medical treatment. Hundreds of thousands of former slaves found themselves without means of subsistence and were forced to be hired by their former masters for minimum wages. Characteristically, alongside the struggle for the abolition of slavery, a struggle for women's rights emerged, supported by first-wave feminists Lucretia Mott and Elizabeth Stanton, sponsored by industrialists from the North. Thus, by engaging two relatively powerless categories of people - women and slaves - in low-paid wage labour, the founders of American capital had one goal in mind: to produce more but spend less. All this led to rapid economic growth and an increase in the number of banks, which by 1913 numbered more than 20,000.
In an effort to collect workers' wages, many merchants, including those in the auto industry, opened generous lines of credit. By 1933, wholesale and retail "automotive paper" accounted for 90 % of the $1 billion factoring. This banking service allowed businesses to scale by receiving payment as soon as goods were shipped and without waiting for funds from the buyer. In essence, this arrangement was not backed by physical money, goods or gold, but was based on a mere promise to repay the loan. Eventually, at the height of the Great Depression, such speculation played a cruel joke: depositors rushed to take their money out of banks that did not actually exist. This caused 20% of the US financial institutions to go bankrupt, and the amount of money available for loans decreased. All this led to a decline in living standards around the world, but at this time the government deliberately expanded credit for farmers and home buyers.
The crisis was helped by the abandonment of the gold standard, which limited the dollar's output. The Federal Reserve could now increase the amount of money in circulation by simply printing it. It became easier for people to get consumer loans or mortgages. World War II marked an adjustment in the Federal Reserve: when international borrowing soared, the key domestic rate was lowered to the lowest levels in the history of the US lending. It was possible to borrow money at 1.7 %, which made it relatively easy and legal to take money from the population to finance the war.
After World War II, the government helped to expand lending even further, this time to small businesses and students. Material goods at interest became available to a wide range of people, and the key rate rose inexorably. The debts of the past were secured with new and even bigger loans and promises to pay them back with even bigger overpayments. The country actually spent more money than it earned. New spending could only be secured with additional money, which by the mid-70s led to unprecedented inflation: the dollar lost a quarter of its value.
In 1981, the Federal Reverse raised the key rate to a record high of 15.8 %. The credit crisis began in the US: over the next 14 years, more than 1,600 banks were closed or bailed out by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC). These bank failures were the largest since the inception of the deposit insurance system in the 1930s. Loan originations in 1984 were estimated at $2 trillion.
By 2017, the total debt of US households rose to a record $12.73 trillion. According to MarketWatch, half of the US residents were unprepared for the crisis, almost one in five Americans had no savings, and one in three did not even have $500 set aside.
In 2023, 9.8% of Americans incomes went to paying off non-mortgage debt, among which $1.5 trillion was auto loans, $1.8 trillion was education loans and about $1 trillion was credit card debt. The latter value was the highest on record since 1999, largely due to rising consumer prices. In fact, the US residents spend money before they have earned it, while bankers create new money by issuing loans. The lack of real funds to recover deposits eventually ends in bankruptcies and world crises.
Social control: engineering of rules
In 1894, when workers at the Pullman wagon factory in Illinois went on a "wild" strike amidst a prolonged economic crisis, production and wage cuts, sociologists Albion Small and George Vincent coined the term "social control". This concept assumed that there was a certain set of rules and standards in society that kept people bound to conventional standards.
While 19th-century society failed to form unified ideals, representing disparate communities, the early 20th century was an era of progressive reform. The progressivists wanted to see American society to be safe, business to be responsible, government to be free of corruption, and working conditions to be improved.
On the one hand, these efforts emphasised the need for greater efficiency and order in the economy as well as in the workplace. On the other, they reflected a shift away from a commitment to social Darwinism and the principles of non-interventionism. Progressive reform was the first example of social control: workers were subjected to intense ideological campaigns and deliberate Americanisation.
By the end of the 19th century, Americanisation - the learning of English and the assimilation of American standards and ways of life - had become all-encompassing. Ellwood Cubberley, one of the leading educators of the period, saw the child as belonging not to the parents, but to the state, whose responsibility was to educate Americans. Compact groups of immigrants had to be settled and assimilated with members of other groups on the principles of deference to democratic institutions and the Anglo-Saxon notion of law, order, and justice.
Since the US in those years had little need for highly qualified personnel, education was aimed at basic labour skills, and testing was widely used as an assessment. Children who did not know English could not cope with the tasks, thus becoming "mentally retarded" for the system, gradually forming a category of "second-class" people, which usually included Mexicans.
At the same time, literally within three decades, without a clearly formed nation, it was possible to formulate a common national idea, expressed in the formula of the "American dream", which gives the right to life, freedom and happiness. The self-made man becomes the cultural ideal. The USA concentrates on the Cold War and countering the "Red Menace": the "American Dream" is implanted not only in the minds of the US population, but also far beyond its borders. Libraries and cultural centers are opened to introduce people from other countries to the ideals of an American society with the "highest standard of living for the masses" in world history.
In 1958, economist John Kenneth Galbraith published The Affluent Society, in which he described the growing power of American corporations to produce wealth, their ability to create consumer demand through advertising, and a growing "new class" of highly educated people. Galbraith argued that in the old-world poverty was a "pervasive fact" of life, but in the United States social and economic policy should be based on the fact that "the common man has access to amenities - food, entertainment, personal transport and plumbing - that even the rich did not enjoy a century ago". However, 40 to 50 million people in the U.S. were still below the poverty line, with no education and low-paying jobs.
By the 1960s, conservative America and its hypocrisy bored the younger generation, activism grew, informal movements multiplied, and protests and actions for racial equality increased. Parents' values and traditions were questioned as social injustice and the brutal Vietnam War distanced the nation from realising the «American dream». The response to public demand was Lyndon Johnson's Great Society programme. It provided the reform of education, medicine, improvement of cities and the development of depressed regions, the fight against poverty and crime. Johnson, a former teacher, was attentive to the needs of low-income schools operating in Texas and Illinois, which had seen some of the worst labour strikes in half a century. By the late 1970s, however, only about a quarter of Americans felt like they could trust the government - down from 77 % in 1964. Changes in morality and culture were not compatible with social engineering and political control. Articles began to appear indicating the emerging postmodern spirit of an era in which old concepts were no longer relevant and the words "liberal" or even "democrat" no longer had precise meaning. The need for new methods of social control was looming in Washington, but at the grassroots level the outlook looked different: "a flight from bureaucracy and a respite from social engineering, especially in racial integration".
The new administration of Ronald Reagan cut social science spending, materialism and consumerism reigned supreme, the rise of "yuppies" - successful young businessmen - and the explosive popularity of blockbuster movies and cable networks such as CNN and MTV. While the latter network shaped the music and aesthetic tastes of the nation, CNN kept Americans informed of international news around the clock. Against the backdrop of economic problems, the struggle for civil rights, feminism, LGBTQ+* rights and environmental issues intensified.
By 1992, more than 60% of American households subscribed to cable TV, and non-network programmes controlled more than 30% of all TV viewing in the US. And while in 1983 90 % of the US media was owned by 50 companies, by 2011 that number had already fallen to 6, creating the illusion of choice in the absence of choice.
A 2007 nationwide survey found that the digital revolution and accompanying changes in news audience behaviour have had little impact on Americans' understanding of national and international processes. Another survey from that year shows that despite the rise in educational attainment over the past 20 years, public knowledge has not changed accordingly.
Framing - creating a context for a news story - has become one of the most prominent ways of influencing public opinion. The truncated approach to reporting on issues, their superficial representation formed a loyal audience, which was successfully used by politicians. In the 1984 presidential election, candidates Ronald Reagan and George Bush Sr. began using the topical issues strategy, providing quotes and stories on only one topic for the day. This strategy limited journalists who could cover a limited number of topics. In 1992, during the Bush and Clinton campaigns, political technologists restricted photographers and journalists from being photographed at rallies and campaign sites.
The media sets the public agenda by censoring images, information and video for the right angle of coverage, which then influences how people vote in elections. In 2021, when Americans were asked to rate the state of the media in the country, about four in ten (41%) said its influence is growing. This updated data from 2011, when, according to a Pew Research Center study, the results were similar. The role of the media in this case is directly related to people's trust in various sources of information: the higher the level of trust, the higher the respondents rate the influence of the media. Surprisingly, even the rapid development of the Internet and social networks did not affect the results of the surveys.
Brave new world: technologies on guard of the order
According to a 2022 survey on the impact of social media, 64 % of US respondents said it has a negative impact on democracy. This result was the most negative among 19 countries, including Europe and Southeast Asia, where people believed that social networks have a positive impact on democracy. According to the researchers, such disappointing results in the US are due to the greater threat Americans see in the spread of misinformation online. 84 % of those surveyed claimed that technological communication has made it easier to manipulate people.
In the 20 years since the first social network, Facebook, the reasons why people share personal information online have transformed significantly. For example, a study by the New York Times Consumer Insight Group found that they include a desire to reveal valuable and entertaining content to others, to define themselves, and to spread the word about brands and phenomena they like or support. From a convenient means of communicating with friends and family, social media has become a real tool of influence.
According to Pew Research, about one in five American adults learn political news through social media. These people tend to be less informed and more likely to be exposed to unsubstantiated claims than people who get their news from traditional sources. The New York Times reports that "the election of Donald Trump may be the clearest illustration that across the planet social media are helping to fundamentally reshape human society." According to the publication, the ability to communicate freely unites once "marginalised groups" and makes them powerful.
There was widespread concern about misinformation among the US adult Twitter users in 2021: 53% said inaccurate or misleading information was a serious problem on the platform. As of 2021, about half (48%) of Americans thought the government should take action to curb misinformation, even if it entails losing the freedom to access and publish content. Apparently, for this reason, cases of censorship on popular online platforms are not perceived as a violation of the fundamental principle of democracy - freedom of speech.
In recent years, there have been numerous examples of digital diktat, which in the US tends to be perpetrated by conservatives or the far-right. The US President Donald Trump's posts have been repeatedly blocked on Twitter, and his account was blocked following the 2021 election. On the Reddit platform, more than 2,000 sabreddits supporting him were deleted during the election. In addition, the social media accounts of David Duke, Stephan Molyneux, Richard Spencer, Alexander Dugin and politicians from Germany's AfD party have been permanently blocked on various pretexts over the past few years. Right-wing politician Nicolás Fuentes' YouTube podcasts have been deleted and his account blocked. Although tolerance and pluralism of thought are at the core of liberalism's ideas, thinkers of the opposite persuasion have been banned for their views. Such rhetoric has led to extreme right-wing tendencies beginning to spread rapidly in the US and Europe for the first time since World War II. In doing so, social networks use algorithms based on the same tags given out by liberal users, labelling their opponents as "radicals", "Nazis", "xenophobes" and others. Bots and moderators hired by political forces are busy banning "deviant" ideas that do not clash with the official "democratic" agenda.
Thus, the ideas of freedom of expression, speech and tolerance, having undergone transformation in the millstones of censorship and political diktat, found themselves in the absolute power of a controlled majority. Since the time of Edward Bernays, the founder of PR technologies, it has been formed by an active minority: from LGBTQ+* to eco-activists. Social networks, mass media, political institutions and even the economy in this case serve only as means of total dictate, the aim of which is to cultivate an obedient society that does not question established rules and norms. Otherwise, the disobedient are subjected to "expulsion from the community", deprivation of their income and social contacts. Although in ancient Athens this form of punishment served as a pillar of democracy, in the modern world it is perceived as an interpretation of more sophisticated means of struggle.
