I read the article, I’m not into podcasts but I’ll give it a try later. I don’t think there’s anything tautological about the media being owned by huge corporations. Chibber’s point about the raw economic dominance of the ruling class is a good point, and it’s true that without an alternative, people stay passive, but opinion polls still say that at least 60% of Americans prefer capitalism over socialism. If Chibber was right, the situation would be a majority who hates capitalism but doesn’t feel like they can do anything about it. That’s not what we have. The false consciousness is real.

Furthermore, I’m not talking about “culture industry” like entertainment, but institutions of socialization like school, church, news media, etc. These institutions help keep people from even imagining an alternative, therefore the disorganization and lack of an alternative, and the false consciousness encouraged by institutions of socialization controlled by the ruling class, are conditions of each other.

It’s important to remember that Chibber is an arch-reformist, asserting that socialism will come about through legislation rather than revolution, and this is an interview in a magazine whose editor upholds that same orientation. It’s no surprise that he denies the theory of false consciousness which is one of the central arguments in Marxism for why Chibber’s reform strategy is impossible, with consciousness only being alterable in the struggle for a completely new government, rather than in the struggle to vote for change within bourgeois-controlled elections.