Black Lodges || One of the most effective ideological victories ever achieved by a ruling class is the transformation of historically specific social arrangements into apparently natural and self-evident truths. The most powerful forms of domination are rarely experienced as domination and they appear instead as common sense, as normality, as simple reality itself. What a society considers “socially acceptable” is therefore never merely a collection of customs, manners, or ethical preferences but it is most certainly a political achievement. It is the result of a long historical process through which particular interests acquire the appearance of universal interests and through which contingent social relations become experienced as the natural order of things.
This insight lies at the heart of the Marxist tradition. From Marx’s earliest writings to contemporary historical materialist scholarship, one of the central arguments has been that human consciousness does not emerge independently from the material conditions of life. Rather, consciousness develops within definite social relations. The categories through which people understand themselves and the world are not generated in an ideological vacuum but are profoundly shaped by the organisation of production, the distribution of power, and the structure of social life itself.
Marx’s famous formulation in The German Ideology remains foundational: “It is not the consciousness of men that determines their existence, but their social existence that determines their consciousness.” This statement is often misunderstood as a crude economic determinism when in reality, it points towards a far more sophisticated understanding of human society. Marx is not claiming that people mechanically absorb ideas from economic structures. He is arguing that the horizon within which people think, judge, desire, and imagine is conditioned by the material organisation of their collective existence.
The question of social acceptability must therefore begin with the question of production. Every society must organise the production and distribution of the necessities of life. Every society develops institutions, laws, moral systems, educational structures, and cultural practices that stabilise this organisation. The ruling ideas of any epoch are not simply arbitrary inventions but ideological expressions of dominant social relations and they help reproduce the existing order by presenting it as legitimate, inevitable, or desirable.
This is why social norms cannot and should never be understood independently of class power. What appears acceptable in any given historical moment reflects not some eternal human morality but the requirements of a particular social order. Social acceptability functions as a mechanism through which societies distinguish legitimate from illegitimate behaviour, rewarding conduct that reproduces existing relations while marginalising conduct that threatens them.
The historical record demonstrates this with remarkable clarity. Practices that are now regarded as morally abhorrent were once not merely tolerated but celebrated as socially respectable. Slavery, colonial conquest, child labour, patriarchal domination, racial segregation, and the exclusion of women from political participation all enjoyed periods of broad social legitimacy. Obviously, it is possible to argue that these still exist today, even ( or rather especially ) in the self-proclaimed liberal democratic construct called the West that still pretends it is just that. Importantly, the existence of this legitimacy cannot be explained by the inherent morality of these practices. Rather, it must be understood through the material interests they served.
The Atlantic slave system, for example, was not sustained primarily through ignorance or individual prejudice. As scholars such as Eric Williams demonstrated, slavery became embedded within the development of capitalist accumulation itself. Entire economic structures depended upon its continuation and under such conditions, ideological systems emerged to normalise and justify it. What was socially acceptable reflected what was economically useful.
The same pattern recurs throughout history. Patriarchal family structures have frequently been presented as natural expressions of biological difference. Yet historical materialists from Friedrich Engels onwards have argued that the modern family cannot be understood apart from systems of inheritance, property transmission, and labour reproduction. The family becomes not merely a private institution but a crucial mechanism through which social relations are reproduced across generations. Norms surrounding gender, sexuality, marriage, and domestic labour consequently acquire immense ideological significance.
What appears as morality often conceals a history of political economy.
This understanding reveals that social norms are not neutral cultural phenomena but components of broader structures of power. They function not only to regulate behaviour but to produce subjects who willingly reproduce existing social arrangements. The purpose of ideology is not primarily deception but its greater achievement is the production of consent. Gramsci then recognised that modern ruling classes could not rely exclusively upon coercion and stable domination required the active participation of those being dominated. It required the construction of a cultural environment in which existing arrangements appeared reasonable, natural, and inevitable.
Hegemony therefore operates through schools, newspapers, universities, churches, entertainment industries, professional institutions, and everyday social interactions. Through these mechanisms, populations internalise assumptions that come to appear self-evident. Certain aspirations become regarded as realistic while others become dismissed as utopian. Certain forms of behaviour become respectable while others become irrational, irresponsible, or dangerous.
Under capitalism, this process acquires a particularly powerful form. The social norms of capitalist societies increasingly reflect the needs of capital accumulation itself. What appears as common sense within capitalist society is, upon closer examination, the sedimentation of a particular historical order. The imperatives of accumulation gradually assume the status of moral imperatives. Individuals are encouraged to understand productivity as virtue, competitive behaviour as an expression of immutable human nature, consumption as the substance of freedom, and the acquisition of wealth, property, and professional distinction as the definitive markers of a successful life. The triumph of this ideological transformation consists precisely in its invisibility: standards generated by historically specific social relations cease to appear historical at all and instead present themselves as the natural criteria by which human existence ought to be judged.
What is remarkable is not merely that these values exist but that they appear morally self-evident to millions of people whose material interests they often undermine.
The work of Pierre Bourdieu demonstrates how social hierarchies reproduce themselves through forms of cultural capital that appear natural rather than political. Individuals internalise dispositions, tastes, habits, and expectations that correspond to their position within social structures. What people perceive as personal preference frequently reflects broader social conditioning.
Similarly, Nancy Fraser has shown how capitalist societies increasingly transform social questions into individual responsibilities. The ideological sophistication of contemporary capitalism lies not in denying the existence of social suffering but in determining how that suffering is interpreted. The contradictions generated by the existing order are not acknowledged as contradictions at all; they are recoded as individual deficiencies. The unemployed worker is told that they lack the necessary skills, the poor that they have failed to exert sufficient effort, and the psychologically distressed that they have not cultivated adequate resilience. Through this process, historically produced conditions are transformed into personal pathologies and society itself disappears as an object of criticism. The economic and political structures that generate insecurity, deprivation, and anxiety are rendered invisible, while those subjected to them are invited to regard themselves as the source of their own misfortune. The highest achievement of such an ideology is that domination no longer requires justification, for its consequences have already been reinterpreted as evidence against those who suffer them.
This ideological transformation serves a crucial political purpose. Once social problems are individualised, systemic critique becomes unnecessary. The existing order escapes scrutiny because responsibility is relocated onto those who suffer its consequences.
The contemporary cult of self-improvement provides a particularly revealing example. Across large sections of the developed world, individuals are encouraged to devote extraordinary energy towards optimising themselves. Productivity, discipline, entrepreneurialism, fitness, networking, and personal branding become moral imperatives. Entire industries emerge around the promise of self-transformation.
What remains largely unquestioned is why such transformation is considered necessary in the first place.
The answer lies not in human nature but in the requirements of capitalist society. The ideal citizen increasingly resembles an ideal employee: flexible, adaptive, competitive, self-regulating, and endlessly productive. Social norms become mechanisms through which economic requirements are translated into moral obligations.
The consequence is a remarkable inversion. Human beings begin adapting themselves to economic systems rather than organising economic systems around human flourishing.
This inversion extends far beyond the workplace. Contemporary societies frequently regard exhaustion as admirable, leisure as laziness, and collective dependency as weakness. The ability to endure increasingly intolerable conditions becomes celebrated as resilience and under such circumstances, social acceptability functions less as a measure of ethical conduct than as an index of compatibility with prevailing economic arrangements.
The deeper problem is that social norms often conceal their own historical contingency. They present themselves as expressions of common sense rather than products of specific social circumstances. Yet history repeatedly demonstrates their mutability.
Only a few centuries ago monarchy appeared natural. Today it appears historically contingent. Colonialism once appeared civilising. Today its violence is widely recognised. The exclusion of women from political life was once defended by intellectuals, scientists, and religious authorities alike. Today such exclusion appears indefensible.
These transformations reveal a crucial truth: social norms are neither eternal nor objective. They are historical products.
This conclusion carries obvious political implications. If social norms are historically produced, then they can also be historically transformed. No institution enjoys immunity from criticism merely because it currently appears normal. Indeed, the very appearance of normality may itself constitute a reason for scrutiny.
Historical materialism therefore rejects the tendency to treat social acceptability as evidence of moral legitimacy. The fact that a practice is accepted tells us little about whether it promotes human flourishing. It tells us primarily that it has become integrated into prevailing relations of power.
This is why critique occupies such a central place within the Marxist tradition. Critique is not an exercise in abstract moral judgement. It is an investigation into the historical conditions that produce particular beliefs, values, and institutions. It seeks to expose what appears natural as historical, what appears universal as particular, and what appears inevitable as contingent. The same applies to social norms more broadly. The categories through which societies distinguish the respectable from the disreputable and the acceptable from the unacceptable are not timeless moral truths but historical formations, shaped by specific social struggles and inseparable from the configurations of power through which particular interests acquire the appearance of universal legitimacy.
This does not mean that all norms are equally valuable, nor does it imply a descent into relativism. Historical materialism does not reject moral evaluation. Rather, it relocates morality within the question of human flourishing. The issue is not whether a norm conforms to tradition but whether it contributes to the development of genuinely human capacities.
The tragedy of contemporary capitalism and our existence in it is that it often treats criticism itself as socially unacceptable. Individuals are encouraged to challenge personal limitations while leaving systemic arrangements untouched. The boundaries of acceptable dissent are carefully managed. One may criticise corruption, inefficiency, incompetence, or even the interpersonal failings in a family but criticising the underlying structure of social relations remains considerably less acceptable, and is more often than not, even punished.
The lesson is therefore not merely that social norms can change but it is that they must remain open to challenge. Any society that elevates its own conventions beyond criticism transforms history into dogma. It mistakes temporary arrangements for permanent truths.
What is socially acceptable is therefore not a revelation from nature, morality, or destiny. It is a sedimentation of historical struggles, economic interests, institutional power, and ideological production. To understand it requires understanding who benefits from it, who enforces it, and whose interests it serves.
And it is precisely within that recognition of possibility that genuine emancipation begins, or in other, less postulating words, fuck ‘em and their rules.
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