So let’s get this straight: living in the West is one grand petty‑bourgeois dictatorship, clothed in advertising jingles and social‑media virtue signals. You wake up every morning in your cubicled existence, shoved into the spectacle of capitalist consent, told you’re “free” as long as you consent to your own consent. You pedal your overpriced latte, you swipe your credit card, you scroll your curated feed, and all the while you’re under the iron heel of the small‑property class, those pious managers of your desires who define what you can buy, what you can think, and whom you’re allowed to love.
What makes it petty‑bourgeois?
Because the dictatorship isn’t administered by some grand commissar or charismatic cult leader, but by your local real‑estate agent, your start‑up HR drone, your neighborhood organic coffee baron. They don’t send the tanks, they send you push‑notifications. They don’t issue decrees through official state media, they drip‑feed you “influencers,” “thought leaders,” “proudly independent brands.” Your entire world is policed by taste, the right avocado toast, the right “woke” hashtag, the right artisanal soap. Dissent? Of course it must be sanitized, “inclusive,” packaged in a recyclable meme, or it doesn’t exist.
But isn’t this just consumer capitalism, you ask?
No, that’s the mistake of liberals who think if only we could shop from another boutique or vote for a different brand of politician, everything would be hunky‑dory. This petty‑bourgeois dictatorship is totalizing. It permeates the smallest crevices of your life, from which podcast you’re allowed to listen to, to which brunch spot you’re encouraged to Instagram. It claims no grand utopia beyond itself, it is content to suffocate you in tiny comforts and endless noise.
And the ideological apparatus?
Forget grand state newspapers, today’s censors don’t burn books, they bury them under Amazon bestseller lists. They replace ideology with algorithms that punish “harmful” opinions by de‑ranking you. They cultivate your self‑censorship through “community guidelines,” spectral supervisors that haunt every comment section. You think you share or like of your own volition? Cute. You are parroting the newest directives of the petty‑bourgeois commissariat, be yourself but only this version of yourself.
What’s the solution?
Post too long. Click here to view the full text.