Public Parks, Private Interests: Marx on The Battle Between Government and Big Business

In the hit NBC sitcom Parks and Recreation, Leslie Knope and her team firmly position themselves in opposition to corporate greed and the exploits of big business. However, most of the scholarly and pop research on the show has focused on Leslie as a feminist icon and the show as civics education. Little attention has been paid to this David vs Goliath fight, in which Leslie, and the City of Pawnee, are definitively David. But what is the ideology behind positioning big business against government, and in presenting government as the little guy?

Parks and Recreation follows Leslie Knope as Deputy Director of the Pawnee Parks and Recreation Department. She is an ambitious, hard-working person, dedicated to making Pawnee a better place, alongside her team. Throughout the series, she gets elected to City Council, turns an old construction site into a park, and eventually is elected Governor of Indiana, and then President of the United States.

Now onto The Community Manifesto. Marx was firmly of the view that the government’s role in capitalism is protecting and serving the interests of corporations and the bourgeoisie, so much that in The Communist Manifesto, he claimed ‘The executive of the modern state is but a committee for managing the common affairs of the whole bourgeoisie’ (Marx & Engels, 2002, p. 221).  This aspect of Marxism, the base and the superstructure, reflects that the economy is the foundation of society, and all other instruments and institutions in society exist to serve its interests. In Anti-Dühring, Engels (the co-founder of Marxism)  states ‘The economic structure of society is always the real basis, starting from which we can alone work out the ultimate explanation of the whole superstructure or juridical and political institutions as well as of the religious, philosophical and other ideas of a given historical period' (Engels, 1939, p. 22). Of course, the modern capitalism that Parks and Recreation presents, and the one we live in, is likely more complex that the capitalism of Marx and Engels, but what do Marxist ideas on the role of government have to say about the Pawnee businesses?

One of the many running jokes of Parks and Recreation is how terrible Pawnee’s local businesses are. In Season 4, in the City Council race between Leslie and Bobby Newport, son of the former Sweetums CEO, Sweetums attempts to install branded voting machines that dispense a ‘complimentary Sweetums candy bar’ when one votes for Bobby, and asks ‘Are you sure?’ when one votes for Leslie (2012, Season 4, Episode 22). In a televised debate for the City Council election, Bobby Newport also claims that “‘If Leslie Knope wins the election, they’ll probably have to move Sweetums to Mexico”’ causing thousands of job losses, but that if he won, he "could get them to stay" (2012, Season 4, Episode 20). Both of these examples highlight not only how Leslie is repeatedly foiled by big business, but the inherent silliness of capitalistic interference in government. The joke comes from the fact that this is what happens in the real world, and in real life, it is the Bobby Newports who win the election, not the Leslie Knopes. Furthermore, in Season 5, when Ben goes to work for the Sweetums Foundation, his new office contains "more mahogany wood than currently remains in the Amazon rainforest", so the joke comes from the fact viewers know big business ruins the environment for frivolous purposes (2013, Episode 15). When Leslie attempts to expose how the Newports are renovating a public heritage building for a birthday party, she goes to local journalist Shauna to expose it, only to be told the story wouldn’t be written because ‘“Sweetums owns the Pawnee journal”’ (2010, Season 2, Episode 21), joking once again about business interests triumphing over Leslie Knope and her good intentions (and also at the media monopolies).

The relevance of these jokes, and the fact that they are being made at all, does inidicate a bit of Marxist streak on account of the showrunners. Because, after all, these jokes are just veiled criticisms of real American society.

However, what is most interesting is that Marxist thought did not contemplate a government who fought so hard against big business. In fact, this seven-season-long running gag poking fun at big business from the perspective of government is quite antithetical to Marxist thought. Traditional Marxist thought didn't anticipate a Leslie Knope who doesn't sit on the 'committee for managing the common affairs of the whole bourgeoisie' (Marx & Engels, 2002, p. 221). Parks & Recreation is upholding the values of Marxism in its comedy, whilst rejecting its finer points.

Of course, the end goal, for Marx, is a stateless, marketless society. So Leslie Knope wouldn’t exist, and neither would Gryzzl, Paunch Burger, Sweetums or the Wamapoke Casino. Or it least if they did exist, they would be owned by the community. 

But for now they do exist, and in the Parks and Recreation world they exist to foil Leslie in making the world a better place.

Reference List:

Engels, F 1939, Herr Eugen Dühring's Revolution in Science [Anti-Dühring], International Publishers, New York.

Marx, K & Engels, F 2002, The Communist Manifesto, Penguin Books, London.

Parks and Recreation: Season 1 2009, television program, NBC, New York.

Parks and Recreation: Season 2 2010, television program, NBC, New York.

Parks and Recreation: Season 3 2011, television program, NBC, New York.

Parks and Recreation: Season 4 2012, television program, NBC, New York.

Parks and Recreation: Season 5 2013, television program, NBC, New York.

Parks and Recreation: Season 6 2014, television program, NBC, New York.

Parks and Recreation: Season 7 2015, television program, NBC, New York.