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"In Martin Luther
King County, individuals, neighborhoods, and interest groups submit ideas for
collective consumption projects."
Why should workers agree
to be slaves in a basically authoritarian structure'? They should have
control over it them selves. Why shouldn't communities have a dominant voice
in running the institutions that affect their lives?
-Noam Chomsky
Language and Politics
Fixed like a plant on his peculiar spot, To draw nutrition, propagate,
and rot.
-Alexander Pope
An
Essay on Man
A touch of dishonesty is part of the very existence of private
merchandising. When a peasant buys a horse, he runs it down in every possible
way. If he sells the same horse a year later, it will have become younger,
better, and stronger... One's own commodity will always be the best-the other
person's the worst. Deprecation of one's competitors-a deprecation that is
usually devoid of all honesty-is an essential tool of one's business.
-Wilhelm Reich
The Mass Psychology of Fascism
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Individual
Consumption
The Capitalist Case
In
capitalism, shopping is the quintessential economic activity. Live to shop;
shop 'til you drop. But in capitalism when we consume we know little about
what others must do to produce what we consume. Even if we wanted to we have
limited ability to temper our requests out of concern for producers. We can
only respect the limits of what is available, of our personal budget, and of
our own desires.
But what
determines availability? The aims and motives of owners, a fact which
significantly restricts consumer options. And what tells us what the market
offers? Packaging, advertising, and word of mouth, none of which is entirely
trustworthy. And what determines our budget? Wages, income, and other forms
of private grossly unequal wealth. And what additional pressures influence us
to buy more of this or that? The norms of gender, class, and culturally
circumscribed behavior that we must "live up to," the requirements
of work, the pressures of seeking status through consumption, and, in the
absence of viable social alternatives, the need to find almost all enjoyment
from private commodities.
The absurdity
of consumption under capitalism is difficult for us "insiders" to
recognize. In The Dispossessed, (Avon,
1974), science-fiction writer, Ursula LeGuin, has a character named Shevek
from a planet devoid of consumerism visit a capitalist shopping mall. His
reaction is as follows: "Saemtenevia Prospect was two miles long, and it
was a solid mass of things to buy, things for sale. Coats, dresses, gowns,
robes, trousers, breeches, shirts, umbrellas, clothes to wear while sleeping,
while swimming, while playing games, while at an afternoon party, while at an
evening party, while at a party in the country, while traveling, while at the
theater, while riding horses, gardening, receiving guests, boating, dining,
hunting-all different, all in hundreds of different cuts, styles, colors,
textures, materials. Perfumes, clocks, lamps, statues cosmetics, candles,
pictures, cameras, hassocks, jewels, carpets: toothpicks, calendars, a baby's
teething rattle of platinum with a handle of rock crystal, an electrical
machine to sharpen pencils, a wristwatch with diamond numerals, figurines and
souvenirs and kickshaws and mementos and gewgaws and bric-a-brac, everything either
useless to begin with or ornamented so as to disguise its use; acres of
luxuries, acres of excrement. After one block Shevek had felt utterly
exhausted. He could not look any more. He wanted to hide his eyes. But to
Shevek the strangest thing about the nightmare street was that none of the
millions of things for sale were made there. They were only sold there. Where
were the workmen, the miners, the weavers, the chemists, the carvers, the
dyers, the designers, the machinists, where were the hands, the people who
made? Out of sight, somewhere else. Behind walls. All the people in all the
shops were either buyers or sellers. They had no relation to the things but
that of possessions. How was he to know what a goods' production entailed?
How could they expect him to decide if he wanted something? The whole
experience was totally bewildering. Were his hosts in this strange world, the
'shoppers' of A-lo, really capable of such daily acts of social
irresponsibility?"
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