It’s become an American Christmas time tradition that goes back many years for families to gather and watch It’s a Wonderful Life on one of the many television and cable channels that air it, or nowadays via online streaming services. People watch it because it makes them feel good. It encompasses the spirit of giving and togetherness that have come to define the holiday season. What many don’t know is that they’re getting a heavy dose of Marxist ideology with their entertainment, an ideology that runs counter to what are considered by many to be core American values. In this paper I will be examining the film through the lens of Marxist ideological criticism to show that It’s a Wonderful Life challenges and repudiates capitalism and the materialistic ideology of the so-called American dream by following the journey of an average American as he sheds his capitalist desires and finds happiness by embracing political consciousness. First I’ll discuss the motion picture, explain the method used to analyze it, and then give my analysis.

It’s a Wonderful Life focuses on a hero from the small town of Bedford Falls located somewhere in everyday America, who wanted anything in his life but to be a hero or to remain in the small town of his birth to spend the remainder of his life there. George Bailey is his name. More than anything, George wanted to get the dust of Bedford Falls off of his shoes and explore the world. Since the age of twelve he dreamed of traveling to Tahiti, going off to college, and building airports and bridges. However, through a series of circumstance, George ends up doing none of that and remains home where he takes over the family business, the Bailey Bros. Building and Loan, and raises a family. Life is going well for him until a misplaced envelope containing $8,000 in cash is misplaced just as the Building and Loan is being audited. His company faces bankruptcy and he himself faces prison. Contemplating suicide, an angel is sent to help him. George gets to see firsthand what the rest of us are only left to wonder; what life would be like had he never been born. The timeline of the movie spans two major events in American history; the Great Depression and World War II. It depicts the social and economic realities in America at the time. Given that the movie was released in 1946, these episodes are relatively recently history.

Upon its release, It’s a Wonderful Life was not a commercial success, and only achieved notoriety when its copyright expired, and television stations were able to play the movie for free, a tradition that began in the 1970s (Ebert, 1999). The film, which is now associated with Christmas, was not intended to be, rather it was meant as “a celebration of the lives and dreams of America's ordinary citizens” (Ebert, 1999). Frank Capra had written several pre-war populist movies, such as Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, and It’s a Wonderful Life is certainly a film in the same vein, and exceeds the popularity of his other works. Beloved by many, it holds an audience score of 95 percent on the review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes with over 200,000 votes (rottentomatoes.com, 2016). There is no argument that the film isn’t a classic.

The purpose of Marxist ideological criticism is to examine an artifact from an economic perspective to determine the power structures it supports or undermines in society. Marxism assumes that obtaining and maintaining economic power is the drive for all other human endeavors, such as politics, systems of government, systems of organized religion, and even the arts and interpersonal relationships (Tyson, 2006). The material economic conditions of society, called the base, is the basis for the superstructure, or the socioeconomic and sociopolitical conditions that exist in society (Tyson, 2006). Therefore, from the Marxist perspective, artifacts are analyzed by examining the ideological message contained therein, and whether or not that message promotes or discourages socioeconomic values and ideologies. Marxist critics acknowledge that class exists, but whereas a critical race theorist might see race as a factor in separating classes, the Marxist critic assumes that socioeconomic classes are the primary lines of division in society (Tyson, 2006). The Marxist views divisions of race, religion, and gender as a way for the upper class that controls the capital, the bourgeoisie, to exert control over the proletariat class, the working class that works to make the upper classes wealthy. For it is only through two means that the bourgeoisie can stay in power, first by keeping the proletariats divided, and second by convincing the proletariat to act in favor of their own subjugation (Tyson, 2006). For a modern example of this principle in action, look no further than the Affordable Care Act. The Republican controlled Congress was able to convince millions of poor voters that having access to healthcare was actually not in their best interests. In fact, according to the lasted PEW Research data, 54 percent of Americans disapprove of the healthcare law as opposed to 44 percent that approve, a spread of ten percent (PEW Research Center, 2016). In short, Marxist ideological criticism is concerned with what’s best for the community and not what’s best for the individual. It’s better for the community if some people pay more taxes so that all may receive healthcare, but for some individuals in the community its worse to pay more taxes for any reason.

In analyzing It’s a Wonderful Life, I will focus on the concepts of commodification, classism, and false consciousness versus political consciousness. In Marxist criticism objects and people are considered to only have value based on their exchange value or their sign-exchange value. Exchange value is how much the item is worth. For example, of I enjoy playing Sonic the Hedgehog then I am deriving use value from that game. However, if I were to sell that game or trade it for another, that would be its exchange value. If I were to take pictures of the game and post it to social media in order for likes, up votes, and shares, then the game would be providing me with increased social value and that would be the sign-exchange value of the game. The exchange value and sign exchange value are elements of commodification (Tyson, 2006).

Classism is an ideology that equates the value of the individual with the socioeconomic class to which they belong. An example of a classist ideology is that people who are of greater financial means, those with greater financial status, are better people than those without financial means, such as the poor. The ideology carries with it stigmas for members of lower socioeconomic classes (Tyson, 2006). How many times has it been said by politicians that those who use welfare are lazy or are leaches? Welfare is a system designed and controlled by the bourgeoisie to help the proletariat, but at the same time the proletariats who use it are often demonized by the same members of the bourgeoisie who set the system up.

False consciousness is an ideology that exists to make the proletariat class not see the defects in the ideology (Tyson, 2006). For example, the ideology of capitalism or “the American dream” is one that relies on false consciousness. Capitalism and he American dream tells us materialistic narratives, like those who work harder will get ahead, property ownership and the ownership of objects with a good exchange or sign exchange value, make us better people and greater than the class that we exist in. If a celebrity buys an $80,000 BMW 7 Series hybrid car and if I buy that same car, then I am as good as that popular public figure. When in reality that figure has much greater financial means than I and probably didn’t have to finance that vehicle, whereas I have to go into debt, make payments, and pay interest in order to “own” same the car. Another failing in the American dream is the idea that anyone can at any point get rich. What I call “the Mark Zuckerberg narrative” is a good example of this. The narrative goes something like this: Mark Zuckerberg had a good and original idea when he created Facebook. As a result of Facebook he is now a billionaire. Therefore, anyone with good ideas and who works hard to achieve them can be the next Mark Zuckerberg. This ignores the fact that Mr. Zuckerberg already came from an upper class family, which was able to afford the resources for him to train on computer engineering from a young age. By contrast, my family wasn’t able to afford a computer until 1999. Mr. Zuckerberg had already made and sold successful computer applications by the time he went to high school. Mr. Zuckerberg’s family were well off enough to be able to send him to Princeton, where he was able to make the necessary connections with other higher classed individuals in order to develop his Facebook product and company.

Political consciousness is determined by socioeconomic reality. A person’s world outlook is shaped by their own economic means, the economic means of their community, in other words those which they experience firsthand, combined with their political situation (Tyson, 2006). Karl Marx describes it thusly: “It is not the consciousness of men that determines their being, but, on the contrary, their social being that determines their consciousness” (Marx, A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy, 1859). The union worker develops their political consciousness through the reality of their employment. They realize that collective bargaining is in their interest, and thus they develop a political consciousness that supports unionization. It wasn’t that their consciousness informed them to support organized labor in the first place or to oppose management. Opposition to management stems from the political reality that management will act in their own self-interest and not in the interests of workers.

To many the meaning of It’s a Wonderful Life is seen as the success of the American dream. George Bailey gets a home, is popular in his community, and has a job that is important to his community. I intend to show that the message of the film in fact runs counter to capitalist ideology and the hegemonic false consciousness of the American dream.

The movie begins in 1919 when a 12-year-old George Bailey is playing on the ice with his friends, sledding down a hill and skidding out over the surface of a frozen pond. His younger brother, Harry Bailey, takes a turn and it doesn’t go as planned. He skids too far and crashes through the ice. George dives through the ice to rescue him and loses his hearing in the process. It was never clear that Harry’s life was in danger, and therefore George receives no accolades for the act, the act had no sign exchange value. George merely saved his brother because he was considering the greater good of the community.

Following the incident on the ice we see George go to work. At the age of only twelve, George has a job. This is the beginning of where we see the capitalist versus Marxist conflict within George. His friends tease him, “Hee-haw, hee-haw, go to work, slave (Capra, 1946).” The “slave” comment is the first time that criticism of the American Dream, in this case, to work hard to achieve one’s goals, is introduced. We find that George is subjugated by his inward facing desire to increase his material circumstances (economic power) (Tyson, 2006). It also implies that George is exceptional in that he does go to a job whereas his friends do not. George works for the local druggist Mr. Gower. He hopes to save enough money to go to college and travel the world and has dreams of joining the National Geographic Society. At work, George soon discovers a telegram that Gower’s son has recently passed away. Distraught, Gower fills an order for a child with diphtheria, but mistakenly puts poison in the capsules. Realizing this and also realizing his class, that a child has no right to question adults, George is uncertain of what to do and decides to seek advice from him father.

George’s father, Peter Bailey, runs the Bailey Bros. Building and Loan. George finds his father in a confrontational meeting. For the first time we see our villain, Mr. Potter. Potter is the richest man in Bedford Falls. George witnesses Potter, a board member of the Building and Loan, put pressure on his father to collect mortgage payments from “these people of yours” (Capra, 1946). Potter is framing the Building and Loan customers as the other, as a class of undesirable people, while then accusing Peter Bailey of running a charity rather than a business, implying that the senior Bailey doesn’t possess noble capitalist sensibilities. For his part, Peter refuses to cave to Potter’s demands, refusing to evict families with children when times are bad and jobs are scarce. For the first time the George is involved in a conflict between Marxist ideology and the false consciousness of capitalism and we observe him developing a political consciousness. Though it is a bad business decision for Peter to not collect the mortgages, the action of not doing so is in the best interest of the community. Peter clearly already has a sharply developed political consciousness. George sides with his father, exclaiming that his father is a bigger man than the wealthy Potter, and leaves without consulting him regarding the druggist’s mix up. The exchange did give George the determination to break class and face Gower on his own to do what’s right. For his actions he first earned a beating at the audacity of a child, a worker, a “slave,” not doing simply what he was told, but then respect and adoration for doing what was right.

The movie then jumps to 1928 on the eve of the great depression. George is finally ready to travel the world. We see him at a ship to buy a large trunk that would be his sole companion on his journey. We learn now that many years later, George’s actions of informing the druggist about the poison, had an exchange value as the clerk offers George the largest trunk in the store at no cost. Why? Because Mr. Gower had already come into the store and purchased it for George. George didn’t confront Gower about the pills for some future exchange of goods, he did it to prevent a member of the community from being poisoned. He did it for the greater good. George is now realizing that doing what is best for society and breaking from class has rewards. His political consciousness is being confirmed by his reality.

Later that evening George has dinner with his father. Peter encourages his son to forgo his dream of traveling and college in order to stay and run the Building and Loan. He appeals first to his son’s sense of community saying that Potter is sick, in his mind, in his soul if he has one, and hates anything that he can’t have (Capra, 1946). To Peter, Mr. Potter’s capitalistic ideology is a disease. But George doesn’t see it that way because he still has his own American dream, he wants to do big important things like engineering. Peter then appeals to his son’s sense of the dream, “It’s deep in the race for a man to want his own roof and walls and fireplace (Capra, 1946).” Peter’s final appeal is to encourage his son to one again break with class for the benefit of his community, “This town is no place for any man unless he’s willing to crawl to Potter” (Capra, 1946). However, George is set in his personal goals and has no concern for the best interests of the people of Bedford Falls, a place he’s wanted to leave his entire life. He leaves to attend a party. On his way back he finds out that his father has suffered a stroke.

With the death of Peter Bailey, George has no recourse but to stay and help shore up his family’s business for three months. He has given him his trip to Europe, but not his dream of college. Already late for his first semester of school, George is once again ready to leave as members of the board of the Building and Loan decide its future. But just as he’s on his way out the door, Mr. Potter begins to criticize George and his father’s company for issuing loans to people that the banks have turned down. “Ernie Bishop,” Potter gives as an example, “The fellow that sits around all day on his brains in his taxi,” describing him as a “discontented lazy rabble instead of a thrifty working class” (Capra, 1946). Again we see Potter separating classes, in this case based on profession. Ernie can’t possibly be a more valuable citizen than one who works in a more respectable career. To Potter, such people have a low exchange value. George responds that the loan got Ernie’s family out of Potter’s slums and made them better citizens and better customers, reminding him that the so-called rabble “Do most of the working and paying and living and dying” (Capra, 1946), declaring that his father saw people as human beings and potter sees them as cattle, in other words merely as commodities. What George is saying is that Potter sees people in this circumstance only by their commodification and exchange value. Potter’s views are similar to modern banks, like Wells Fargo which opened two million bank accounts in people’s names without their knowledge (Blake, 2016). Wells Fargo also treated people like cattle, which resulted in congressional and FBI investigations, as well as fines and consumer outrage. Like the people today, George was outraged by Potter. As a result of his expressed disdain for the kind of man Potter is, the board voted to not give Potter control over the company, but only on the condition that George would stay and run it.

George’s pendulum between his belief in the American dream and satisfying his wants and his desire to act in the best interests of society at large has swung further from the capitalist side towards the Marxist side. George stays in Bedford Falls and gives his school money to his brother who becomes a football star. However, George’s dreams of college have not evaporated. He is merely waiting four years for his brother Harry to return so that he can take over the Building and Loan. However, Harry returns with a new bride and a new career. Depressed, George realizes that his fate is tied to his hometown and to his company.

Throughout the film there is another narrative at hand. A tale of two romantic interests, Violet and Marry. George knows both of them from childhood, and Violet has always carried a flame for George while his close friend Sam Wainwright carries a flame for Mary. In his downtrodden state following his brother’s return, George goes for a walk about town where he runs into Violet. Violet is extremely beautiful and has the attention of not one but two male admirers. As soon has she spots George she goes to him, telling the two gentlemen she’s with that she might have a date, to which they obediently respond that they’ll wait for her. This demonstrates that Violet has significant sign-exchange value. She herself is a commodity. George may not be able to follow through on his big dreams, but he does have the chance to achieve greater social status by being in a relationship with Violet and therefore propel him into a higher class. Realizing this he invites her out and she’s more than happy to agree. But George’s idea of a good time and Violet’s are not congruent. George makes a big romantic gesture that include walking barefoot through fields that Violet find to be crazy (and so does the on looking crowd). She just wants to party. Rejected, George walks to Mary’s house. Mary is present in the movie as more of a plain girl, the opposite of the glamour that Violet exudes. Mary’s ambitions are also small. She wants to remain close to her community. The encounter between George and Mary in this scene is hostile. Mary makes romantic overtures that George ignores outright. He’s trying to decide why he’s there or if he wants to be there. He can decide if he wants her or wants to settle for her as he’s settled with all of his other dreams and goals. It’s not until that Sam Wainwright calls on Mary that George’s internal conflict settles. Wainwright has a plan to create a plastic factory in Rochester, NY and wants Mary and George to get in on the ground floor. George is now faced with the opportunity to do exactly what he’s always wanted to do, big and great things. But George’s internal pendulum in this moment swings farther from capitalism to Marxism. He realizes that he is in a dilemma; he can either embrace capitalism or embrace Mary, but not both at the same time. Capra uses Mary as the personification of that choice and the physical representation of the incompatibility of capitalism and happiness. George makes up his mind and suggests that Wainwright build the factory in Bedford Falls on the site of one that shut down to bring jobs back. George is now focused on what’s best for the proletariat, and in that moment he gives into his love for Mary. The two kiss passionately. The next scene is a jump in time to their wedding. George, it seems, is able to find happiness not in capitalism, but in the contradiction of it through engaging in the betterment of society, and with that realization he allowed himself to find happiness in his love for Mary as opposed to the false consciousness of the American dream, symbolically joining the proletarian revolution against the bourgeois to protect his entire class.

Following a beautiful wedding ceremony in the rain, George and Mary are escorted by Ernie’s taxicab to their honeymoon. George proudly holds a large wad of cash that they intend to spend lavishly. George may have let go of his dreams, but he’s about to get a taste. As with every plan that George has made in his life, this one is going to fall apart as well. Just as the newlyweds are on their way out of town, they pass the Building and Loan and see a crowd gathered outside. George’s uncle Billy has closed the doors as there’s a run on the banks. Clearly we are now in 1929, or perhaps a little later, and the Great Depression is underway. Normally when faced with a dilemma between his personal wants and the needs of others, George would be conflicted. Not this time. The hegemonic ideology of the American dream seems to be now dead, dormant, or diminished within him. He does not hesitate to leave his bride behind and uses his honeymoon money to save Building and Loan. The antagonist returns when Potter calls asking if police are needed stating that “mobs get pretty ugly sometimes” (Capra, 1946). Again Potter paints the proletariat class that the Building and Loan serves as a lower class of people, ones incapable of controlling their baser instincts to resort to violence in times of stress. During the phone conversation Potter notes that he has bailed out the banks and offered to guarantee the Building and Loan for fifty cents on the dollar, which George outright rejects. It’s when Potter sends a surrogate who he co-opted into the crowded Building and Loan lobby with this offer that we get a glimpse of George’s full transformation. George tells the crowd that Potter has the department stores, the banks, the busses, and is after the Building and Loan because it’s cutting in on his business. Potter only wants the Building and Loan, “Because he wants to keep you living in his slums and paying the kind of rent he decides” (Capra, 1946). He continues, “We can get through this thing. We’ve got to stick together. We’ve got to have faith in each other” (Capra, 1946). George is now fully advocating that that the class of people who Potter so despises and sees them for only their exchange value bind together and act as a class, because it is only through unifying as a single class that the proletariat can overcome the bourgeoisie. In this case, without the Building and Loan, Potter would have full economic and political sway over the people of Bedford falls (Marx & Engels, Manifesto of the Communist Party, 1848) and therefore have power over their collective political consciousness.

During the Great Depression the Building and Loan is successfully building homes for the working class and the housing development Baily Park is established. We see George and Mary personally moves an Italian immigrant family from Potter’s slum into his housing development and giving them gifts. “Bread. That this house may never know hunger. Salt. That life may always have flavor. And wine. That joy and prosperity may reign forever” (Capra, 1946). Meanwhile, Baily Park is a threat to Potter because it’s “ninety percent owned by suckers who used to pay rent to you,” says his rent collector, and the “local yokels making with David and Goliath wisecracks… Even though they know Bailey’s never made a dime out of it” (Capra, 1946). George Baily and his company are abolishing existing property relations, specifically bourgeois property, which is a goal of Marxism (Marx & Engels, Manifesto of the Communist Party, 1848). Potter responds to this thread by attempting to co-op George by offering him a three-year contract for $20,000 a year, a substantial increase over the $45 per week he currently makes. This appeal to George’s capitalistic instincts intrigues him. But he realizes that not only would it end the last bit of resistance to Potter, but that what Potter is really doing is attempting the colonization of George’s consciousness, a method of subjugation that aims to convince a person to see reality in the way that they want them to view and experience it (Tyson, 2006). If George worked for Potter then he would the Building and Loan be owned by Potter, but so would George himself. Though at first tempted, George outright rejects the notion calling Potter a “a scurvy little spider” (Capra, 1946).

Following World War II, sometime in 1945 or 1946, an event takes place that causes George to question his shift from capitalist to Marxist ideology. His uncle Billy loses an $8,000 bank deposit. Really, the money is stolen by Potter. This happens the same day that the Building and Loan is being audited. We see this internal conflict in how George behaves with his family. St home his son remarks that “the Brown’s next-door have a new car, you should see it” (Capra, 1946). George responds, “What’s the matter with our car, isn’t it good enough for you?” (Capra, 1946). It’s clear that the money crisis is awaking the material desires of his youth. This is further evidenced by his expressed resentment for his house and in a conversation with his daughter’s schoolteacher. “Maybe my kids aren’t the best dressed, maybe they don’t have any decent clothes…” George is clearly becoming more aware that his family isn’t a part of the upper class, and is now wondering if his children are receiving poor treatment due to their material possessions and are thusly treated as lesser than because they have less.

In an act of desperation, George goes to Potter for a loan to cover the lost $8,000, something that Potter enjoys. Potter spells out how George is in a class so far beneath him that he isn’t worthy of a loan. He has no stock, no bonds, and only a $15,000 life insurance policy with $500 of equity. George is literally worth more dead than alive. Adding insult to injury, Potter accuses George of impropriety suggesting that the money was spent on gambling or sexual affairs. Not only is George a lower class person economically, but he is also morally deviant, two things that from a capitalist perspective go hand in hand. Potter offhandedly encourages George to go to his clients, the “riff-raff,” as he puts it, saying that if he did so they’d run him out of town on a rail (Capra, 1946). As George leaves the meeting Potter calls for an arrest warrant to be issued for his arrest, showing yet again how economic power equates to social power.

Depressed, George goes to a bar owned by the Italian immigrants that he helped build a house for. He leaves there angry and drunkenly crashes a car into a tree. It’s then when a new character is introduced. Clarence, George’s guardian angel. Clarence finds George on a bridge where the stress of the capitalist reality that he’s fought and thought he’d freed himself from his now choking him to the point where he is contemplating suicide. Knowing George’s selfless nature, Clarence himself jumps from the bridge prompting George to save him. Still not believing that his life has value or has had any impact on the world, George wishes not for death, but to have never been born. Clarence grants this wish.

George is left to explore an alternate reality version of Bedford Falls where he never existed. Essentially, what the town would be like if capitalism led by Potter were to go unchecked. He sees his former boss, the druggist Gower. Now rummy hobo who spent 20 years in prison for poisoning a kid. Literally the lowest class, the homeless Gower is mocked by other slightly higher class proletariats and viewed as a pariah. His presence shows how close the working class itself is to homelessness, and how that fear is expressed through ridicule. Walking down “main street” George sees that the storefronts have been replaced with gambling dens, strip clubs, and bars, in other words, vice. Left to its own devices, capitalism has destroyed the community. That’s not all. In this other reality George is reunited with his friend Ernie. Ernie never got out of the slums, and his wife took their child and left, showing that even interpersonal relationships are dominated economic status and material conditions. George also learns that Harry drowned after falling through the ice, the soldiers he saved were killed in the war, and that Mary never married.

Finding it preferable to face incarceration than to live in a world of runaway capitalism, George wishes to return to his own life, and greets it with enthusiasm, knowing that the work he and his Building and Loan have done to improve class conditions was more important than any potential prison sentence. Although it took a literal miracle for George to come to this realization, his wife Mary knew it all along. She had done what Potter had sarcastically suggested that George do. She went into the community and spread the word that George was in trouble. All of his “riff-raff” clientele scraped together what money they had to donate to George’s cause. “I wouldn’t have a roof over my head if it wasn’t for you, George,” one man says as he gives money (Capra, 1946). Even the sheriff who was there to arrest him tore up the arrest warrant and chipped in. In the final moments, Harry returns from Washington were he just received the Congressional Medal of Honor and offers a toast, “To my big brother George, the richest man in town” (Capra, 1946). It is in this moment that George realizes once and for all that by uniting the proletariat class against the bourgeoisie that they, the wage-laborers, can have economic power and all happiness and privileges that come with it.

George began the story with the typical American dream fueled by personal wants and materialistic capitalistic desires, but at every turn when he was faced with a choice to do what is better to enrich himself or to enrich society, he chose society. Through the plot device of Clarence, we were able to see how, when left unchecked, capitalism causes societal decay, and further how without a unified force, the proletariat cannot wrestle property ownership from the bourgeoisie. That It’s a Wonderful Life expresses a pro-Marxist ideology is important in American culture where the hegemonic ideology is the corrupting force of capitalism, which enslaves, not empowers, the “average America” to the point where they do not even realize or believe that they’re locked in a classist struggle. Though viewers may not be aware that they are receiving an anti-capitalist message that undermines the American dream of obtaining wealth, they are receiving it, the message makes them feel good, and every year a new generation of Americans are exposed to it and the worldview of George Bailey is impressed upon them, helping to shape society in his image, counter to the capitalist narrative of the Mark Zuckerbergs of the world.

References

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Ebert, R. (1999, January 1). It's a Wonderful Life Movie Review. Retrieved from Movie Reviews and Ratings by Film Critic Roger Ebert: http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/great-movie-its-a-wonderful-life-1946

Marx, K. (1859). A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy. (S. Ryazanskaya, Trans.) Moscow, Russia: Progress Publishers.

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