On the recasting of submission to hierarchical constraint and the middle-class culture of servility and class compromise as moral virtues.
Black Lodges || One of the most revealing pathologies of contemporary life is the spectacle of individuals who openly acknowledge the concentration of wealth and power, lament the hollowing out of whatever democratic institutions we pretended to exist, recognise the corruption of political systems, and even describe their circumstances in the language of domination or tyranny, yet continue to insist that they must remain non-confrontational in their conduct and political orientation.
Far from representing a sign of moral maturity, such a disposition reveals the extraordinary success of modern systems of power in colonising not merely the institutions through which social life is organised but also the psychological and emotional structures through which individuals interpret their place within it. What is expressed through the language of non-confrontation is therefore not simply a personal preference for harmony, nor merely an aversion to conflict rooted in temperament, but rather a historically produced form of consciousness in which submission presents itself as virtue and accommodation appears as wisdom. The significance of this transformation cannot be overstated, for a ruling order that succeeds in making its subjects fear conflict has achieved something far more durable than obedience enforced through coercion alone. It has implanted its authority within the subjective life of those it governs, producing individuals who police themselves according to moral codes that ultimately serve the interests of their own domination.
The central insight of the Marxist tradition has always been that history advances through antagonism rather than consensus, through conflict between social classes rather than through polite negotiation among abstract citizens. Yet contemporary liberal societies have elevated civility to the status of a civic religion, treating social harmony not as a contingent political outcome but as an unquestionable moral imperative. This elevation of civility is particularly striking because it occurs within societies whose material existence remains inseparable from forms of violence that extend far beyond their borders and penetrate deeply within them. States that celebrate dialogue and democratic discourse continue simultaneously to wage wars abroad, oversee economic arrangements that produce mass deprivation, and maintain policing apparatuses designed to manage populations rendered surplus by the requirements of capital accumulation. The contradiction is not accidental. On the contrary, the fetishisation of civility functions precisely because it obscures the violence upon which the social order rests, encouraging citizens to interpret political disagreement as a matter of etiquette rather than power and transforming structural domination into a series of procedural disputes whose resolution is indefinitely deferred through institutional mechanisms.
To understand the appeal of non-confrontation one must therefore move beyond the realm of personality and examine the ideological conditions under which contemporary subjectivity is produced. Althusser’s conception of ideology as a lived relation to the world provides an especially useful framework for this task because it directs attention away from ideology as a collection of abstract beliefs and towards the everyday practices through which individuals come to experience social reality as natural and inevitable. Non-confrontation operates precisely at this level. It is not merely an idea that people hold but a discipline they perform, a habitual orientation through which the contradictions of capitalist society are rendered psychologically manageable. The non-confrontational subject learns to endure exploitation without naming it as exploitation, to accommodate humiliation without recognising it as domination, and to experience powerlessness not as a political condition requiring collective transformation but as a personal challenge demanding emotional adjustment. What appears on the surface as civility is therefore better understood as an ideological technology through which social antagonisms are displaced from the realm of politics into the realm of individual behaviour.
Gramsci’s theory of hegemony illuminates the broader mechanisms through which this transformation occurs. For Gramsci, ruling classes maintain their position not simply through coercive institutions but through the production of consent, constructing cultural and moral frameworks within which existing relations of power appear both legitimate and inevitable. Consent, however, is never freely given in the liberal sense of the term. Rather, it emerges through educational systems, media institutions, religious traditions, and cultural norms that gradually establish the limits of acceptable thought and action. Within this framework, civility functions as a particularly effective instrument of hegemony because it transforms political passivity into a moral obligation. Anger becomes evidence of irrationality, militancy becomes synonymous with extremism, and resistance itself comes to be regarded as a threat to social order. The ideal citizen of capitalist society is therefore not one who actively supports domination but one who has become incapable of imagining meaningful opposition to it, having internalised the belief that conflict itself is inherently undesirable regardless of the conditions that produce it.
The historical significance of this achievement becomes apparent when viewed against the longer trajectory of capitalist development. Systems that once depended openly upon conquest, enslavement, and colonial subjugation increasingly rely upon forms of self-regulation in which individuals voluntarily conform to norms that reproduce existing relations of power. Fanon recognised a similar process within colonial societies, observing that domination operates not only through external coercion but through the internalisation of the coloniser’s values and moral assumptions. The colonised subject learns to monitor speech, suppress anger, and moderate demands in accordance with standards established by those who exercise power over them. Contemporary capitalist societies reproduce this dynamic in altered form. Citizens who pride themselves on their civility frequently mistake their own political domestication for ethical sophistication, failing to recognise that their reluctance to confront injustice often reflects the successful internalisation of norms designed to prevent collective resistance. In this sense the modern subject has not escaped colonisation but merely encountered a different coloniser, one whose authority is exercised through markets, institutions, and cultural forms rather than through direct imperial administration.
The ideology of non-confrontation must therefore be understood as a manifestation of alienation in its broadest sense. Marx’s analysis of alienated labour identified the separation of workers from the products of their labour, from the labour process itself, from their species-being, and from one another, yet the concept can be extended further to encompass the emotional dimensions of social life under capitalism. Individuals become estranged not only from what they produce but from their own capacities to experience and express justified outrage. The system rewards composure in the face of cruelty, celebrates moderation amidst catastrophe, and treats emotional detachment as evidence of rationality. Consequently, those who respond passionately to exploitation, environmental destruction, or social injustice are routinely pathologised as irrational or uncivil, while those who accommodate themselves to such conditions are praised for their maturity. Civility thus functions less as a moral principle than as a mechanism through which acceptable emotional responses are regulated in accordance with the requirements of social stability.
This regulation becomes especially visible in the operation of liberal democratic institutions, which present themselves as neutral arenas for resolving social conflict while remaining fundamentally structured around the preservation of existing property relations. Elections, parliamentary debates, judicial proceedings, and regulated forms of protest create the appearance of political participation while simultaneously limiting the forms through which dissent may be expressed. Conflict is not abolished but managed, channelled into procedures that rarely threaten the foundations of economic power. The resulting system depends upon the belief that confrontation is unnecessary because legitimate avenues for change already exist. Yet whenever collective action begins to exceed these limits through strikes, occupations, blockades, or other forms of disruptive activity, the supposedly neutral institutions of liberal democracy reveal their underlying function with remarkable clarity. The language of tolerance gives way to the language of security, procedural inclusion is replaced by coercive exclusion, and the state reasserts itself as an instrument for defending the existing social order.
Lenin’s analysis of the state then remains instructive precisely because it strips away the ideological veil obscuring these realities. The bourgeois state, he argued, is not an impartial mediator standing above society but an apparatus through which one class maintains its dominance over another. From this perspective, appeals to non-confrontation acquire a profoundly political significance because they effectively demand that the oppressed refrain from challenging the institutional structures responsible for their oppression. Such appeals confuse peace with justice, treating the absence of visible conflict as evidence of social harmony even when the underlying conditions of exploitation remain intact. Yet the tranquillity produced by domination is not peace in any meaningful sense. It is merely the temporary stability of an order sustained through asymmetrical distributions of power.
The persistence of this ideology helps explain the peculiar paralysis characterising much contemporary political life, and culture in general, from work, to relationships, parenting to merely waking up. Individuals frequently acknowledge injustice while refusing to engage in forms of action capable of disrupting it, denounce corruption while remaining committed to the norms that protect it, and call for transformation while recoiling from the conflicts through which transformation has historically occurred. Marcuse anticipated this development in his analysis of advanced industrial societies, arguing that systems of domination increasingly absorb and neutralise opposition by integrating dissent into existing cultural forms. Under such conditions resistance becomes aestheticised rather than organised, protest becomes symbolic rather than strategic, and radical language becomes detached from radical practice. The result is a political environment in which dissatisfaction is ubiquitous yet collective power remains largely dormant.
This contradiction is perhaps most evident within sections of the liberal middle class whose commitment to progressive values rarely extends beyond forms of engagement that leave underlying structures untouched. Their political imagination is frequently confined to demands for representation, recognition, and inclusion, objectives that may alter the composition of existing institutions without fundamentally transforming their function. Confrontation appears threatening not because it is inherently destructive but because it risks exposing the degree to which their own comfort remains dependent upon the very arrangements they claim to oppose. Civility therefore serves as a protective mechanism, allowing criticism to be expressed in forms that do not require meaningful sacrifice or challenge entrenched interests.
Historical experience provides little support for the belief that major social advances emerge through polite persuasion alone. Whether one examines labour movements, anti-colonial struggles, civil rights campaigns, or revolutionary upheavals, it becomes apparent that ruling classes rarely surrender power voluntarily. The extension of democratic rights, improvements in working conditions, and victories against colonial domination were secured through sustained confrontation that disrupted the normal functioning of existing institutions. The notion that contemporary societies can achieve comparable transformations without conflict requires a profound forgetting of the processes through which previous gains were won. Such historical amnesia is not accidental but politically useful, encouraging populations to view confrontation as anomalous despite its central role in every significant struggle for emancipation.
The digital age has intensified these tendencies by creating new forms of political engagement that simulate participation while often insulating individuals from the risks associated with collective action. Social media platforms transform outrage into content, dissent into data, and political expression into a continuous stream of commodified communication. Individuals experience the emotional satisfactions associated with resistance while remaining physically and organisationally disconnected from the structures capable of translating dissatisfaction into power. The result is a peculiar form of non-confrontational militancy in which expressions of anger proliferate even as the institutions responsible for social suffering remain largely unaffected.
Against this backdrop, the recovery of confrontation must be understood not as an endorsement of indiscriminate violence but as a reassertion of political agency. Confrontation signifies the refusal to accept existing arrangements as immutable, the willingness to challenge structures of domination directly, and the recognition that meaningful change inevitably generates conflict because it threatens entrenched interests. Far from being purely destructive, such confrontation possesses a creative dimension insofar as it generates new forms of solidarity and collective identity. Through shared struggle individuals cease to experience themselves as isolated victims of circumstances and begin instead to recognise their position within broader social relations. Workers confronting employers, tenants confronting landlords, and communities confronting state power discover capacities for collective action that remain invisible within the confines of individualised political life.
To reject confrontation under such conditions is ultimately to accept a world organised around the imperatives of profit, hierarchy, and accumulation while denying oneself the means through which that world might be transformed. Gramsci observed that hegemony reaches its greatest strength not when domination is hidden but when it is recognised and nevertheless accepted and he remains right in that analysis. The contemporary insistence upon civility despite widespread awareness of systemic injustice exemplifies precisely this condition. Knowledge without action becomes resignation, while moral condemnation detached from collective struggle degenerates into a form of political melancholy that mistakes awareness for resistance.
The task before us is therefore not to abandon ethics but to liberate ethics from its identification with obedience. A genuinely emancipatory politics cannot be built upon the suppression of conflict because conflict arises inevitably wherever relations of domination exist. The choice is not between confrontation and harmony but between confrontations that preserve existing inequalities and confrontations that seek to overcome them. The ruling order has already declared its priorities through the routine sacrifice of human needs to economic imperatives, through the devastation of ecosystems in pursuit of profit, and through the maintenance of social arrangements that condemn millions to insecurity despite unprecedented productive capacity. To respond to such realities with civility alone is not evidence of virtue but an acceptance of the terms established by power. History advances when individuals and communities refuse those terms, challenge the structures that impose them, and transform their dissatisfaction into organised collective force. The future, as every emancipatory movement has understood, belongs not to those who adapt themselves most successfully to injustice but to those who confront it.
