A neo-Marxist analysis of President Bush’s 2008 financial crisis speech

 

 

The financial crisis of 2008 revealed serious and deep seeded issues in regards to class based inequalities and imbalances of power.Continuing with my theme of presidential speeches during times of tragedies and crises, I chose to conduct a neo-Marxist analysis of former president Bush’s response speech to the 2008 financial crisis. This financial crisis almost crippled the United States. By conducting a neo-Marxist analysis of Bush's speech, I was able to reveal the class based inequality issues and issues regarding imbalances of power. A neo-Marxist perspective helps expose how material conditions and economic practices shape dominate ideology regarding taken-for-granted assumptions about who should, or should not, be empowered. The neo-Marxist perspective focuses mainly on oppression, and empowerment based on materialism and economic practices. A neo-Marxist analysis has a lot to do with hegemony and artifacts as sites of struggle. Hegemony is the privileging of a dominate group’s ideology over that of other groups.  Neo-Marxist critics examine popular culture texts as sites of struggle via preferred or oppositional hegemonic arguments regarding materialism.

 

The word choices Bush uses to describe the cause of this financial crisis in his speech reveal the class based issues mentioned above. He states that a lot of people that were new to credit or had bad credit histories borrowed more money then they should have. Bush classifies these people as borrowers. He barely discusses that they borrowed this money because Congress was not regulating private investors/lenders. Because of this, these lenders/investors were able to practice unethical business practices. They sold high priced mortgages to low income people that could not afford them under false pretenses. This eventually led major investment banks to buy packaged debt from all of the people that could not afford the mortgage payments. This almost collapsed the U.S economy. Bush assigns most of the blame to the borrowers, not the unregulated organizations that practiced unethical business practices. Bush repeatedly uses words and phrases that express his disappointment of the borrowers and how  that their actions have jeopardized the U.S economy. Bush also shames the major investment organizations, but he only does this for a few minutes. This is a perfect example of neo-Marxist principles. As stated. neo-Marxist focus mainly on oppression and empowerment based on materialism and economic practices. The unethical business practices of the investors have managed to oppress many people, as well as seriously hurt the U.S economy. This is also a god example of hegemony within the united states. In this artifact, Bush focuses the majority of the blame on the borrowers. This is privileging the dominate group's ideology over that of other groups. The dominate group in this context are mainly rich and upper-class people. This analysis has revealed that there are in fact class based inequality issues in the United States. The lower-class people ,or borrowers in this context, are oppressed by more affluent individuals. It also shows that there is a serious power imbalance within the United States. A few unregulated private investors almost managed to collapse the United States economy with their unethical business practices.