“We all hustle to survive.” That’s not just the reality of the millions of unemployed discarded by capitalism, it also the tagline for the new Golden Globe winner film American Hustle. It is the latest in a series of David O. Russell films about survival and self-reinvention — cornerstones of capitalism’s big “American Dream” lie. These themes speak to millions in the working class who struggle to survive and who hold on to the hope that one day they will be able to reinvent their lives to escape the daily grind of capitalism.
However, in this current period of economic crisis and imperialist competition, U.S. capitalism appears unable to offer the working class anything other than continued misery. Conditions for the working class are becoming visibly worse: mass deportations, mass unemployment, slashing of food stamps and unemployment benefits, prolonged war in the Middle East, and a growing National Security Agency (NSA) security state.
It is the job of capitalism’s Hollywood propaganda machine to keep the American Dream myth alive, by repackaging it as something that is obtainable even in a period of crisis. And American Hustle does just that.
The film, a comedy-crime drama set in the late 1970s, begins with the words: “Some of this actually happened.” It is a fictional account loosely based on a real FBI sting operation, “Abscam” (Arab Scam). In that operation, the FBI set up a fake Middle Eastern investment company and hired a con man to lure in white-collar criminals. The scam eventually attracted high-ranking politicians, including a U.S. Senator and several members of the House, who were convicted of accepting bribes in exchange for political services.
In the film’s interpretation of “Abscam,” con man Irving Rosenfeld (Christian Bale), his mistress/accomplice Sydney Prosser (Amy Adams) and FBI agent Richie DiMaso (Bradley Cooper) balance an odd love triangle with a half-baked scheme to bring down a few white-collar criminals.
Throughout the film everyone is hustling to get their piece of the pie. Rosenfeld and Prosser attempt to live the American Dream by selling forged paintings and fake loans. The FBI catches them. They eventually cut a deal, offering to help bring down a few criminals in exchange for their freedom. DiMaso’s dream to move up in the FBI and have people work for him pushes him to go after bigger fish, including Congress and the mob. In the end, the politicians go to jail and Rosenfeld and Prosser, after conning the FBI, live happily ever after. They put their hustling days behind them in order to run their own legitimate art business. The takeaway message: the American Dream is possible, even in the midst of crisis, you just have to hustle your way to the top.
The reviews in the mainstream press praise the acting but have little to say about the politics raised in the film. To its credit, the film calls attention to an episode of political corruption in U.S. history few know anything about. But while the director has stated that he is more interested in telling a story about his characters than he is about telling history, his account of the 1970s (and what he leaves out) must be taken seriously.
The capitalist crisis of today had its origins in the crises of the1970s caused by the rise of U.S. imperialist rivals in Japan and Germany, stagflation (a condition of slow economic growth, high unemployment, and rise in prices), and the failure of U.S. imperialism in Vietnam. The Watergate scandal, Nixon’s resignation and the subsequent exposés by Sen. Church’s Senate committee revealing illegal activities of the FBI, CIA and NSA were part of the bosses’ attempts to blame the crises of that period on individuals rather than on capitalism itself.
“Abscam” occurred in the wake of these crises, at a time when public confidence in capitalism and the U.S. government was at an all-time low. At the same time, however, the international communist movement and the militant labor and civil rights struggles it had inspired were also collapsing because of their reliance on liberal reforms and bourgeois elections. The possibility of revolution was being abandoned and a new era of cynicism and individualism began to set in.
The “Abscam” operation was an attempt by the FBI to restore public confidence in both the FBI and in the larger U.S. political system. By focusing on “bad-apple” politicians, the FBI hoped to repair the damage to its image caused by the Church committee hearings and to show that the political system was ultimately sound. And while the bosses have been successful in winning many in the working class to once again believe in capitalist “democracy” and the American Dream, the ongoing crisis of capitalism has again shaken the faith of many workers.
The film uses the “Abscam” story of the past to teach us how to view the present. In the same way the FBI attempted to restore faith in the U.S. political system by exposing some of its problems, American Hustle attempts to rebuild faith in the American Dream by revealing its flaws. The film taps into the ideology of cynicism that has been brewing since the 1970s and seems to proclaim, “Yeah, the American Dream is a bunch of bullshit. It’s one big hustle. It’s a corrupt game of survival of the fittest. So what — maybe you can survive, too.”
Lacking any visible alternative to capitalism, workers are invited to “hustle” in pursuit of this new American Dream — to do whatever it takes to get theirs. Today the old American Dream’s myth that hard work brings success is joined with a hustle mentality sold to a generation of youth through rap. The bosses promote drug dealers turned rappers like Jay-Z who hustled to survive the ghetto but climbed his way to being a billionaire boss.
The message to our youth: Under capitalism, everyone hustles and only the strong survive. Working class youth are taught to accept that capitalism is a game of survival of the fittest, and that those on the bottom are either weak or lazy. This hustle mentality erases working-class consciousness and teaches workers to strive to be a boss. It hides the fact that the working class, united and armed with communist ideas, is the only class that has the power to end the misery of capitalism.
Only communist ideas that promote collectivity over individualism and faith in the working class over cynicism can combat the death spiral of capitalist ideas. We must redouble our efforts in this period to combat the bosses’ lies and hold up the torch of communism under the banners of the Progressive Labor Party to fight for a world where workers don’t have to hustle to survive, and where the American nightmare of capitalism becomes a story of the past.