Adbusters, the self-proclaimed journal of the mental environment, is providing non-consumers many ways to resist rampant consumerism today, also known as Black Friday. The beginnings of Buy Nothing Day are attributed to Vancouver artist Ted Dave in 1992. Dave sought to illuminate the obsession with hyper-consumption. This year, amidst the economic meltdown, Adbusters is emphasizing the role of consumer culture in creating the crisis. Rather than blame the crisis on a few corrupt financial leaders, co-founder of Adbusters Media Foundation, Kalle Lasn sees basic everyday consumerism as the bedrock:
“It’s our culture of excess and meaningless consumption — the glorified spending and borrowing of the past decade that’s at the root of the crisis we now find ourselves in.”
Some of the practical suggestions Adbusters make are:
- Credit card cut up – standing outside a major shopping center with scissors, offering to cut up shoppers’ extra credit cards. According to Bankrate.com, Americans carry between five and ten credit cards.
- Zombie Walk – walking around shopping malls, mimicking the undead expressions of shoppers. Some activists go as far as painting their faces and wearing torn clothing, in typical zombie fashion.
- Whirl Mart – go to your favorite sprawl store with nine of your friends, each wheeling a shopping cart. Form a congo line of shopping carts and wander aimlessly through the store without buying anything.
“It’s our culture of excess and meaningless consumption — the glorified spending and borrowing of the past decade that’s at the root of the crisis we now find ourselves in.”
Agreed that it’s not a few greedy individuals who created this crisis. Agreed that we have a culture of consumption. But there’s a certain irony to economically and socially privileged intellectuals telling working people not to buy big screen tv’s on Black Friday as a political statement while we watch the government giving away billions of our tax dollars so that corporate executives can live comfortably in mansions in which entire rooms are devoted to state of the art home theater equipment.
This year especially, this day was being hyped as the day when consumers would get some of the biggest bargains of the year. I suspect many working people were looking at the sales and thinking to themselves “Gee, I’d like a big screen tv but there’s no way I can afford one for $1,299. But I could afford one for $399. So this is my chance to get something that I want but otherwise can’t afford.” Are we against people owning big screen tv’s? Or are we only against people buying them at the cheapest possible price?
A friend of mine, who grew up in a family where he sometimes was given mustard sandwiches for lunch because they couldn’t afford meat or cheese but could manage bread and mustard used to say “You know, the idea of socialism is not to reduce rich people to poverty but to elevate working people to lives of luxury.”
Not to be vanguard-ish or snarky, but I really doubt that what is on most working class families minds these days is “Gee, I’d like a big screen tv…”.
It’s probably more like, ” Gee, I hope I can make my rent/mortgage-car insurance payment this month” or “Gee, I hope I can buy groceries for the week”.
Buy Nothing Day is simply a reminder that the Holidays are not about excessively buying crap we think we need. And it’s not aimed at just working class folks, it’s aimed at all consumers.
The world is not so black and white. It is made up of more than just the working class and ruling elite. Marxism is dead, or at the very least irrelevant…this is the 21st century and we need new ideas and concepts to shape the future.
“You know, the idea of socialism is not to reduce rich people to poverty but to elevate working people to lives of luxury.”
“Marxism is dead, or…..irrelevant.”
In the spirit of dueling aphorisms, and the dead Karl Marx, how about socialism is all about “from each according to their abilities, to each according to their needs.”
And everyone needs a big screen TV, three squares a day and a place to flop.
Dave, if working people aren’t thinking about buying big screen tv’s because no one has enough money, then who is flocking to Wal-Mart, Best Buy, etc. to purchase these items?
Or, conversely, if you are correct then it would appear that Buy Nothing Day really isn’t aimed at working people at all because they are all too poor to think about “excessively buying crap we think we need.”
Certainly it is true that “the world is not so black and white” but I think that favors my point rather than yours. Plenty of working folks who are struggling to make ends meet also want their families and their kids to have the same things that the more well-off enjoy, including big screen tv’s, computers, video game consoles, etc. And why shouldn’t they?
I always figured that the putrid little bumper sticker “Live simply so that others may simply live” was probably created by someone who “does without” only as a lifestyle choice and not because they ever had to.
I almost laughed out loud when I read your trite little “Marx is dead” closer. Putting aside the many other ways in which the statement is silly, it’s so utterly and classically First World to ignore the fact that there are millions of people around the planet that belong to socialist and communist parties, or to mass organizations and trade unions that were inspired by marxism or are led by marxists. Poof! I have wished them away because they are brown-skinned or black-skinned and do not speak English and did not write important books that I studied in college.
“And everyone needs a big screen TV, three squares a day and a place to flop.”
B&C M, does “three squares” include by definition the occasional beer? To paraphrase Emma Goldman, “If I can’t swill I don’t want to be part of your revolution.”
Spoken like the true vanguard that you are.
You and the party know best, and everyone else is racist. Thats pretty low Peter.
Your assumptions about me are pretty funny.
I didn’t go to college or even graduate high school. I actually grew up working class and with the exception of the last 20 months (since the birth of my son), I have worked my whole life…… I’ve also been broke, homeless and in debt up to my ears. I’ve been in rehab, prison and any other fucked up institutions you can think of. I have lived it first hand and seen how fucked up shit is. Does that mean I am without privilege? Of course not, but I’ve always found it insulting to listen to activists speak about “the masses” like they know what’s best. Sometimes I think activists are so far detached from the rest of the world and what people are actually going through, that they can’t even relate to those they claim to stand in solidarity with, as evident by the many newspapers and propaganda that I see floating around leftist circles.
Get out in the streets without the safety of other activists and actually talk to people and watch as their faces glaze over at the mention of 20th century politics and how it relates to them today.
Also, I am not the slightest bit impressed with the authoritarian leftist leaders of Latin America…I see them for what they really are and suspect that many others do as well.
Peter, you have been very helpful and supportive to myself and food not bombs in the past, and I thank you for that. But, so many of your posts on this and other forums are not that helpful and seem very trollish. Kudos to you for again trying to tear down a concept that doesn’t fit with the party line.
It’s a bitter irony that when white anarchists criticize Marxism as a dead explanatory model that it’s chalked up to some kind of white, western privilege. Are the former Panthers and BLA members like Alston and Balagoon also blinded by their white privilege? Are the Latin American anarchists articulating especifismo and other anti-authoritarian models criticizing Marxism from their white, western privilege?
Accusations like this are part and parcel of the stupid sectarianism rampant in the hundreds of bickering Marxist parties and organizations (not that anarchists haven’t had their fair share of sectarian idiocy as well–witness Bookchin’s work in “Lifestyle Anarchism Vs. Social Anarchism”). It’d be nice to get past it and have some honest conversations. If one wants to make a case for a living, breathing, and socially relevant Marxism (and I believe that we can do just that), Peter, one can do so without that kind of nonsensical crap.
Dave, I offer my unconditional apology for my comments that were directed at you personally. I don’t think that my criticism was politically off-base but I personalized it and made assumptions about you that were incorrect and you’re right to call me on that. You’re also quite correct that I didn’t know anything about you and I am glad that you corrected me on that point because, yes, to me it makes a difference whether the person that’s speaking has some basis in experience or not.
I do want to clarify that I did not call you a racist nor do I think that you are. Again, I should not have personalized my remark because in doing that it not only insulted you in a way that I should not have, but it also distracted from the point I was trying to make. The white progressive movement in the United States has a very difficult time validating the ideas and experiences of people of color both in the U.S. and around the world. I don’t think that it’s helpful to dismiss millions of people who are living in intense conditions of oppression, and who have deeply held beliefs and convictions about how to change the world, as mere “authoritarians.”
I also think you should extend the same consideration to others that you would claim for yourself. I don’t know what would be the basis for your assumption about “[Getting] out in the streets without the safety of other activists and actually talk to people.” Since I spend practically every day talking to working people who have been beat up by the system in one way or another, I feel pretty comfortable that I know something about how people are feeling. I won’t lay out my life story in quite the excruciating detail that you have, but I’m also pretty comfortable that I have some basis in personal experience to understand what they have to say.
So I’m well aware of how easily people glaze over when activists talk politics. And that includes “let’s all stop consuming and do street theater by walking around with zombie face paint in the Wal-Mart” just as much as “let’s sell our paper with the slogan ‘all power to the revolutionary proletariat.’” It is a genuine, daily challenge to find ways of engaging people that will give them faith that this isn’t just all a shell game or a joke.
I don’t assume that people are unable to do that just because I don’t fully agree with them politically. The original post was about Adbusters, which is a great magazine even though I obviously have my criticisms. Kevin, who posted it, is someone whose media work I respect very highly. The only discussions that you and I have had are, as you say, in the context of legal issues affecting Food Not Bombs, which is an important and positive project.
On the other hand, my political beliefs are as genuine and sincerely arrived at as yours. Reducing every thing that I say that you don’t like to “Ha! That’s just the party line, you commie you!” may be fashionable but it’s not nice.
Getting back to what appears to me to be one of the original points of this entire discussion – that somehow ‘buy nothing day’ stands in the way of imminent class equality being achieved through people purchasing electronic gadgets at a discount:
” “Gee, I’d like a big screen tv but there’s no way I can afford one for $1,299. But I could afford one for $399. So this is my chance to get something that I want but otherwise can’t afford.” Are we against people owning big screen tv’s? Or are we only against people buying them at the cheapest possible price? ”
I would actually have to say that yes I am against people – rich or poor – buying tv’s, especially big screen tvs… I have yet to come across a sustainable tv (from cradle to grave they are incredibly toxic) and they leave a lasting mark on our environment. Since Peter in your argument you seem to imply that poor people deserve or even have a right to big screen tvs does this extend to people all around the world? Do we honestly believe the earth can support every single household owning at least one television?
Beyond that tvs along with voting and the internet are some of the greatest tools of control ever devised. The average us household has the tv on for 5hrs a day?! On top of work and sleep there aren’t many hours left in the day to actually change the system we all live under.
“You know, the idea of socialism is not to reduce rich people to poverty but to elevate working people to lives of luxury.”
I would actually have to say that there is no possible way that everyone on earth will ever be able to live a life of luxury and it is far more important to move towards sustainability and getting reacquainted with entertaining ourselves through games or other social group activities. If we don’t simplify our lives the earth will do it for us.
Peter,
There used to be an IWW brewery somewhere’s out West that made Old Wobbly, the one beer to have when you can’t afford more than one. Swillin’ is a grand working class tradition. It should be honored and practiced on a daily basis. It’s all part of the essential four D’s approach to living la vida dulce: drinking, dining, dancing, diddling. I like to add a fifth/sixth D, dilly dallying.
Niels,
I’m all for social games, and group activities, especially if they involve fermented spirits. But it sounds like you’re trying to take away my constitutional right to watch TV on a big screen. Aint gonna happen. Somewhere’s in the constitution it says we got a right to bear big ass TV remote controls in the pursuit of happyness. And TVs can’t be any more toxic than these damn computer monitors that facililate these air-udite give-and-takes.
Deric,
Is there a Cliff Notes version for your comment?
You lost me after “bitter irony”.
Niels, you pose some important questions about the sustainability of consumer technology.
I don’t know if your question was intended to be rhetorical or if you thought that the answer was self-evident, but I have to say that I really don’t know whether or not the earth would sustain every household on the planet owning one television. Seriously, I don’t and I would be curious to know what scientific evidence exists that would help us to answer questions like this. And while we’re at it, is there a trade-off? Like, could every household on the planet have a tv if we could promise that they would never again be placed in the back seats of SUV’s or on Greyhound buses or on commercial aircraft? What if we limited the number of tv sets in sports bars?
But seriously, I hope that it is possible to one day have a society capable of making rational decisions about sustainability and development. In the meantime, though, the questions that you bring up only raise other questions. If limiting the availability of some kinds of technology is necessary because of the potential for environmental harm, who implements those limitations and how do they do it? From where I sit, those questions look like they are about social class and distribution of power, not environmental or consumer consciousness.
B&C M, I don’t know about Old Wobbly but I have a beer bottle label for a brewery down in Pennsylvania that used to brew “C.I.O. Beer” – the label was the hand-shake insignia that was often associated with the labor movement in those days, and the letters stood for “Choice Ingredients Only.”
Damn! Another distracting digression.
C.I.O. beer:
http://www.paperstuff.com/index.php?main=Catalog&mode=ViewItem&uid=2533
I would agree that computers & their monitors are actually more harmful than tvs…
For tvs in general I would say that I don’t believe that the earth can support a tv in every household (especially when the infrastructure to support the tvs is taken into account – electrical wiring, power grid, and access to media)
As far as the sustainability of electronics go those questions will probably be answered more by the earth than by us as a society: (wikipedia)
“The Earth has an estimated 61 years of copper reserves remaining.[26] Environmental analyst, Lester Brown, however, has suggested copper might run out within 25 years based on a reasonable extrapolation of 2% growth per year.[27]”
The similar is true for many other important metals and copper is pretty crucial to electronics… Beyond that I would say that our comfy standard of living isn’t something that we’ve created in the us but instead relies on cheap to slave labor oversees as well as having access to places where environmental regulations are all but nonexistent… Remove those things and it’ll be pretty hard to have the high tech lives that soo many people in the us currently enjoy.
Peter,
Thanks for the CIO beer link.
Niels,
In a nutshell, some people got too much stuff and not inclined to give it up freely, others are just getting by. Sooner or later, we’re gonna run out of stuff. Sounds like you think that we’ll run out of stuff before we figure out a way to live la vida sostenible.
It has been suggested that we should all try to curb our appetites for things of a frivolous nature.
Who wants to go first?
Niels, you’ve twice said, with respect to imposing limitations on technology, that it is “the Earth” that will decide. What does that mean? Even if I took it at face value – well, we’re going to run out of this stuff eventually, so then we won’t have it – that would seem to suggest that the rate at which we use up these resources, the manner in which we use them, the priorities given to their uses, what alternative technologies are developed to serve the same or similar purposes, and who gets to make all those decisions is all pre-ordained. Is that what you mean?
Again, emphasizing that my comparison is pure, 100% speculation, what if the people making decisions for the major industrial powers were to say “Look, providing computers and internet access to the people of the world is a very high priority. High enough, in fact, that we are prepared to scrap and recycle 90% of the existing materials that use similar technologies to conduct military surveillance, deploy and guide military equipment, and network the huge armies and armadas of the major military powers.”
Wouldn’t that change the equation?
And if it would, then wouldn’t that mean that creating the political power capable of making the decisions to effectuate that change in the equation would be a high priority? Higher than, say, telling working stiffs that they have to give up their consumer electronics because “we” are going to exhaust these resources with our “too much” life?
Bottle and Can,
Sure. There are loads of people of color and folks living in underdeveloped countries that also criticize Marxism from a similar perspective as Dave’s. So Peter’s suggestion that Dave’s criticism came from some kind of white, western privilege was silly.
By the way, the fake vernacular’s pretty sweet.
Deric,
Back atchya with yer impenetrable verbage. Why didn’t you say that in the first place?
Not everyone is fluent in jargonese.
But nearly everybody here seems to be a self-appointed spokesperson for the downtrodden.
And the nattering and nitpicking that goes on, whilst great sport, can wear a person down.
I favor Peter’s take on how to divvy up the Earth’s goodies. Let’s cut off the Pentagon, then there’ll be enough left over for a chicken in every pot and a big screen TV in every flop.
Bottle and Can,
I know it’s shocking, but horror of horrors, some working class folks read political theory and understand it. I don’t think “wobbly”, “flop”, “air-rudite” and the other stuff that sounds like it’s pilfered from an old Mr. Block comic is any less jargonistic.
Darn tootin’.
If only it were so easy Peter but I’m afraid that you can’t simply remove the parts of the current system that you don’t like (the massive military) and continue the rest to continue to function without change… Why should foreign people continue to work for almost nothing and live in poverty when we aren’t supplying their governments with the needed foreign aid or direct military supplies to control their people? Then suddenly we can’t fill our wal marts and other box stores with unrealistically cheap goods and support the massive infrastructure needed to both maintain and continue to advance our technological lifestyle.
Beyond that I think it’s pretty clear what I mean when I say that the earth will decide – I think we can all agree that the earth can’t support 1 trillion or even 100 billion people on the planet. In the most basic level the earth has decided on limits to our population. People can continue to push the potential of technology to allow us to indefinitely bend earth’s limits but I just don’t buy it. With every advancement we are confronted by new diseases and areas of massive contamination. Wonderful.
Deric,
I guess if you’ve got it, you gotta flaunt it. A knack for throwing around arcane references can come in handy in bar room or blog debates. Don’t mean to cramp your style. Just letting you know that when you start throwing around names like Alston, Balagoon, I don’t know who the hell yer talking about.
Don’t know Mr. Block, but I did favor the Fabulous Furry Freak Bros.and Mr. Natural back in the day.
Hey, Radical Bunny, where do you stand on all this?
And congratulations, Kevin, you sure know how to stir things up.
B&C, you don’t know Mr. Block? You get two points for authenticity. We radical intellectuals all know that Mr. Block was the fictional character of song, story and cartoon in the old IWW and OBU publications. Mr. Natural, by the way, was freaky enough to scare me off of hallucinogens.
i gotta say, this has been by far the most interesting, frustrating and silly conversation i’ve been a part of in a while…i don’t know whether to laugh or cry.