Meditations

Consumerism and its Discontents

2009-01-23T14:52:00.006-05:00

This is a great video I came across a while back. Please read the excellent text accompanying the video on Youtube.

Books You Should Read III

2009-01-16T17:15:00.005-05:00

Herbert Marcuse
"Counter-revolution and Revolt"

Slavoj Zizek
"Violence"

Christian Marazzi
"Capital and Language"

Sinclair Lewis
"It Can't Happen Here"

Göran Therborn
"What Does The Ruling Class Do When It Rules?"

Excerpts From "The System of Objects" By Jean Baudrillard

2009-01-16T16:55:00.004-05:00

Credit

Credit customers [have learned] how to make use of objects in complete freedom as though they were already "theirs". The difference, of course, is that while such objects are being paid for they are simultaneously wearing out: the final payment-due date is not unrelated to the "replacement-due" date - indeed, as we know, firms strive to make the two intervening periods coincide exactly. There is always the risk, therefore, as in the event of defectiveness or loss, that an object will be, so to speak, used up before it is paid up. Even when credit seems to have been perfectly integrated into everyday like, this danger is the basis of an insecurity that was never experienced in connection with the "patrimonial" object. Such an object was mine: I owed nothing. An object bought on credit will be mine when I have paid for it: it is conjugated, as it were, in the future perfect...

We are forever behindhand relative to our objects. They are here before us, yet they are already a year away, located either in that final payment or else in the next model by which they are bound to be replaced. So credit simply transfers a basic psychological situation onto the economic plane; the obligation to follow a sequence is the same at both levels, whether it is economic, as with successive hire-purchase payments, or psycho-sociological, as in the systematic and ever-accelerating succession of series and models. In any event, we experience our objects in a predefined, mortgaged temporal mode. If there are now barely any restrictions on the use of credit, perhaps the reason is that all our objects today are apprehended as if they were obtained on credit, as debts incurred to society as a whole - debts that are always susceptible of adjustment, always fluctuating, always prey to chronic inflation and devaluation...

Credit must be viewed as far more than a financial arrangement, for it is nothing less than a fundamental dimension of our society and in effect a new ethical system.

The Precedence of Consumption: A New Ethic

...Until our parents' generation, objects once acquired were owned in the full sense, for they were the material expression of work done. They were, in short, a capital. Today objects are with us before they are earned, they steal a march on the sum total of effort, of labour, that they embody, so that in a sense their consumption precedes their production.

The Obligation to Buy

Today a new morality has been born. Precedence of consumption over accumulation, forward flight, forced investment, speeded-up consumption, chronic inflation (implying the absurdity of saving) - these are the motors of our whole present system of buying first and paying off later in labour. Credit has brought us back to a situation that is in fact feudal in character, reminiscent as it is of the arrangement under which a portion of labour would be allocated in advance, as serf labour, to the feudal lord. There is a difference, however, for our system, unlike feudalism, reposes on complicity: modern consumers spontaneously embrace and accept the unending constraint that is imposed on them. They buy so that society can continue to produce, this so that they can continue to work, and this in turn so that they can pay for what they have bought.
"Buy days mean pay days - and pay days mean better days!"
"Buy now - the job you save may be your own!"
"Buy you way to prosperity!"
The illusionism is truly remarkable: society appears to extend credit to you in exchange for a formal freedom, but in reality it is you who are giving credit to society, alienating your future in the process. Of course the system of production still depends fundamentally on the exploitation of labour-power, but today it is strongly reinforced by the circular consensus or collusion whereby subjection itself is experienced as freedom...

* * *

...A fundamental truth about the present system emerges here too: objects now are by no means meant to be used but solely to be produced and bought. In other words, they are structured as a function neither of needs nor of a more rational organization of the world, but instead constitute a system determined entirely by an ideological regime of production and social integration.

Capital Disaster

2009-01-14T16:34:00.008-05:00

The daily reports of economic doom and gloom just amount to mass media's diagnosis of various symptoms of "free" market capitalism in its death throws. Save your money, do not invest, and above all do not believe anything economists, bank analysts or politicians say about the state of the economy. Casino capitalism is imploding from within.

The internal contradictions of late-stage capitalism which are solely responsible for the impending economic implosion have been widely discussed. Most recently, Christian Marazzi makes some excellent observations in "Capital and Language." He links the roots of the New Economy's boom and bust cycles to the shift towards financialization in the 1980s and 1990s. "The financialization of household economies, the diversion of an increasingly larger part of family savings to securities markets around the world in the hopeful search for increasing returns... constitutes a globalization or worldwide distribution of risk... which must be read together with the downsizing of the national welfare state." In effect by turning the worker/consumer into a petty investor, the economy was able to grow exponentially, but at the expense of spreading the risks of investing to those with the least amount of capital at their disposal. Making any gains for the vast majority very tenuous, especially during the bust portion of an economic cycle. Concurrently, by dismantling the welfare state, the safety nets designed to help those who have fallen victim to market fluctuations are eliminated, further eroding the consumer base.

With the simultaneous rise of market value and corresponding decrease and indebtedness of the worker/consumer base, the most fundamental contradiction of the New Economy or late-stage capitalism becomes apparent in the form of excess inventories and market bubbles.

"The question of excess inventories has been associated by many observers with the perverse effects of overtrading: the more fever-pitched the rising phase of the [economic] cycle as an effect of increased consumption fueled by debt, the more violent the recessive demand phase and, therefore, the higher the volumes of unsold stock."

To be sure, bust cycles are fed in proportion to the preceding rise of the economic cycle and are dependent on the amount of unsold surplus-value stock which cannot be translated into liquid capital. This is exacerbated by the collapse of market value, which eliminates consumer investment capital and consumer spending resulting in ever higher volumes of unsold inventories and worthless market shares. This can only result in a downward spiral of layoffs, bankruptcies, and further market devaluation. Only those with vast amounts of money can survive an economic bust cycle of a magnitude proportionate to that of the preceding market bubble, the last of which is the greatest the world has ever known.

According to Marazzi, "The euphoria of the financial markets raises the specter of a worldwide financial crash. The financial-economic indicators and comparisons with the stock market performance in the 1920s justify the fear of a crash of epic proportions. In such situations, the reason of those who see increasing stock prices not as the irrational exuberance of speculation, but as the real growth in social production, is not at all sufficient to protect us from the risk of catastrophe..."

In other words even if you are a true believer in the system, which is what the system itself unquestioningly requires in order to function, your belief still cannot delay catastrophe.

To further quote Marazzi;

"The financialization of the 1990s generated additional incomes but, beyond distributing them unequally, it created them by destroying occupational stability and salary regularity, thus helping to exacerbate the attention deficit of worker-consumers by forcing them to devote more attention to the search for work than to the consumption of intangible goods and services.

The condition imposed by the financial markets for the creation of financial gains has in fact been the promotion of downsizing, reengineering, outsourcing, and mergers and acquisitions, which have made the work force less secure by allocating more attention to the risk of losing exchange value than to the loss of the use value of the workforce. In the post-Fordist economy, the capital necessary to the production of goods has been subtracted from the remuneration of the work force. It has not been taken into account that the work force is not only a producer but a consumer, not only salary cost but also income."

A wildly skewed income distribution ends up destroying the consumer base, forcing people to go into debt in order to prop up the economy. When credit is no longer available the system implodes. Those who have milked the system retain all the wealth, those who consume are left with nothing. It's time to wake up.

The ruling elites are scared and do not want to cause panic among the multitude, so they are not telling us how bad things really are. The only solution to the current economic holocaust is a new social, economic and political paradigm. Either we can try to fix a system that is inherently undemocratic and unjust and find ourselves back on track in a rat race of ever increasing, ever intensifying boom and bust cycles which will only continue the transfer of wealth from the majority into the hands of the few, or we can choose complete non-compliance in the status quo and unequivocally demand something better.

Given the impending collapse of the gigantic derivatives market, the only way to transform our economy is through the elimination of debt, credit and the entire parasitic financial structure and by transferring ownership of the means of production to the workers.

Since people are already paying for corporate bailouts in the form of deficit spending and taxation by governments with their future wages, why not just bypass the government / corporate interface and own the companies outright without the managers and executives who are the cause of the problem to begin with and the accompanying debt that will be transferred to an already broke consumer base?

It won't be long now, and the choice will not be up to the elites.

Shame On Us

2008-12-10T04:46:00.003-05:00

How sad that Canada has come to this. Stephen Harper is an habitual liar with no regard for ordinary people, he has shut down Parliament to save his own skin in the middle of the worst economic crisis in almost 80 years, setting a very dangerous precedent by doing so, and people are mad at the opposition parties. I really don't understand.

People are more concerned about public image than honesty and the ability to govern with the citizens in mind. It seems to me that many Canadians would rather Harper stay on as Prime Minister and ruin the country by pursuing his laissez-faire capitalist programme, than have the coalition safeguard our social institutions and work to fix a fast ailing economy that is inextricably tied to the disastrous mess happening in the United States.

Stephen Harper has used propaganda and scare tactics to confuse, divide and mislead people in order to retain power. He has succeeded in alienating Quebecers right before a provincial election, by accusing the opposition of forming an unholy alliance with Separatists (and Socialists), when his Party has done the same not once, but twice, in order to try and bring down previous Liberal governments. Not to mention the can of worms he opened by standing up in the House of Commons and declaring Quebec a nation not too long ago. Furthermore, he has repeatedly misled the Canadian people by insisting that there was no economic crisis and that he would not run a budget deficit, most recently during the last federal election campaign. As we saw in last week's Economic Update, he tried to use this crisis to further his ideological agenda which is anathema to the vast majority of Canadians. His actions and words are dishonest and hypocritical in the extreme.

Despite all of this and according to the latest polls, support for the Conservatives is stronger than ever, and the amount of outrage at the opposition parties even among traditional Liberal and NDP supporters is high.

This just confirms that people are brainwashed enough to vote and speak out against their own best interests. However, I believe in the end, the Governor General made the right decision.

The Conservatives will force another election when the House of Commons reconvenes, after ten months of inaction on economic matters, and they will win a majority. They will use the worsening economic crisis to scrap all the social programmes we've built up since the 1950s, sell off valuable government assets to their rich friends at rock bottom prices, and continue to shift the tax burden from those who have the most to those who have the least, in effect continuing the laissez-faire capitalist policies that are responsible for the current financial and social crisis in the first place.

The economy is going to disintegrate with the Conservatives at the helm. Wages will be cut, jobs will be lost, companies will shut down, there will be massive inflation, food will become prohibitively expensive for the vast majority of people, and we'll have no one to blame but ourselves.

Like junkies who have to hit rock bottom before they can save themselves, we will all have to suffer for what this government is doing, and when people finally wake up, it's going to get very ugly, very fast.

Only then will we be able imagine building a new society, and believe me it won't include the Conservative Party of Canada.

Scammed!

2008-12-10T04:38:00.007-05:00

Banks and multinationals are robbing the vast majority of ordinary people by means of a financial and economic system whereby money can be made from nothing, producing nothing of real value, with full backing of the taxpayer through government bailouts should the shady economic practices be exposed for the illusion they are.

Simultaneously, this same system dominates the vast majority of working people of every social class on two fronts; by holding power over people's livelihoods by the ever decreasing purchasing power of salaried labour through inflation, wage caps, or the threat of unemployment on the one hand and by brainwashing people into leading a shamelessly consumerist lifestyle, often going into chronic debt while doing so, on the other.

The system inherently leads to a widening gap between rich and poor, concentrating ever greater amounts of wealth and power into the hands of the very few, while alienating and marginalizing everyone else. We can plainly see that nations with the greatest amount of income disparity and the weakest social fabric are the ones that are hit hardest by the consequences of these economic charades.

These same banks and companies are managed by strict adherents to a fanatical economic ideology that does not believe in rules, regulations, or social safety nets except when it suits their agenda. Governments are held hostage by the dictatorship of the economy, and have no choice but to either collaborate by meeting their demands, or risk having too many angry unemployed people with a lot of time on their hands. Either way, the rich get what they want, with no guarantees that the economy will recover. Everyone else simply has to tighten their belts, while trying to keep the system afloat, thus continuing the cycle.

People are starting to realize the extent of this scam and are beginning to speak out against the collusion of government with business interests, but they also feel powerless to change the status quo.

Ask yourself why so many people don't bother to vote? Ask yourself why these economic practices are allowed in the first place? Ask yourself where all of that money went?

Books You Should Read II

2008-11-19T23:42:00.007-05:00

Theodor Adorno
"The Culture Industry"

Noam Chomsky
"Chomsky On Anarchism"

Herbert Marcuse
"One-Dimensional Man"

Margaret Atwood
"Payback: Debt and the Shadow Side of Wealth"

Alan Weisman
"World Without Us"

Jean Baudrillard
"The Illusion of the End"

Year To Date Shock Market Performance

2008-10-02T02:38:00.010-04:00

Here are some graphs to illustrate the underlying "strength" of the global economy. Remember, we've been hearing from all the "experts" and government "managers" ad nauseam, that the fundamentals of our economy are strong, until last week-end. Almost overnight, it suddenly became necessary to have a $700 billion dollar taxpayer cash injection to keep the economy from a complete meltdown. As is plainly evident from the graphs below, the trend, despite much violent turbulence, is that the markets are shedding value at a steady and accelerating rate.

U.S. markets have lost about 25% of their value during the past year. Tokyo's Nikkei lost almost 23% since the beginning of 2008. European markets fared slightly worse with London's FTSE losing 23% and Frankfurt and Paris shedding around 27%. Toronto fared slightly better, falling only about 17% since the beginning of 2008, cushioned by the record prices of commodities such as oil and gold.

The next three months should be very interesting, given the upcoming elections in both Canada and the United States, and the holiday season. My bet is the markets will continue to tumble, especially when frightened consumers tighten their belts, keep from spending their money, and forgo Christmas shopping altogether. I can hear retailers world-wide trembling already.

The Revolution is Exactly 400 Days Away

2008-09-30T18:09:00.010-04:00

I happened to come across these videos on YouTube. The first was published on August 25th, 2007, with a prediction, the second was posted 400 days later. They might mean nothing to you, or you will understand and want to act. The way we live is about to change. Are you prepared?

Fast forward 400 days.

Books You Should Read

2008-09-18T02:53:00.010-04:00

Gore Vidal
"United States Essays 1952-1992"
"Perpetual War For Perpetual Peace"

John Ralston Saul
"Voltaire's Bastards, the Dictatorship of Reason in the West"
"On Equilibrium"
"The Collapse of Globalism and the Reinvention of the World"
"The Unconscious Civilization"

Jean Baudrillard
"The System Of Objects"
"La société de consommation"
"The Perfect Crime"
"Fatal Strategies"
"Utopia Deferred, Writings for Utopie (1967-1978)"

Gwynne Dyer
"War"
"The Mess They Made, the Middle East After Iraq"

Naomi Klein
"The Shock Doctrine"
"No Logo"

Jacques Attali
"Une brève histoire de l'avenir" (soon to be published in English as "A Brief History of the Future")

Christopher Hitchens
"god is Not Great, How Religion Poisons Everything"

Thorstein Veblen
"Conspicuous Consumption"

Sir Steven Runciman
"The History of the Crusades"

Paul Virilio
"Open Sky"

Paul Virilio and Sylvère Lotringer
"Pure War"

Market Meldown, Corporate Bailouts and Government

2008-09-17T13:15:00.023-04:00

The United States is not a democracy and has not had a capitalist economy for a very long time. Gore Vidal and Noam Chomsky have been saying this since the 1970s but many people chose not to listen, and look at where we are now.

Our friends south of the border live in a corporatist republic where government, regardless of party affiliation, works hand in hand with big corporations, who pocket as much of the profits as they can, and ship them off-shore to avoid paying taxes. Neither have much responsibility towards their citizens or their consumers. The citizen/consumer, in turn, feels alienated, disenfranchised, and without hope for change. This only reinforces the status quo, both politically and economically.

The U.S. economy is starting to show the symptoms of years of deregulation, mergers, outsourcing, and downsizing. The virtual eradication of the manufacturing sector in favour of a "service" based economy that does not produce anything of concrete value has annihilated their account balance. Their over-reliance on credit has sunk them irreversibly in debt, largely to China, Japan, South Korea and Saudi Arabia.

The problem we are seeing because of these self-inflicted policies is being exacerbated by the widening gap between rich and poor. By concentrating the vast majority of the wealth in the hands of so few, the economic base of consumers in a large market is effectively wiped out.

Consumers are broke, out of a job or working for a hideously low wage, and their homes are being repossessed. Their credit cards are maxed out and they can't get another mortgage. Their taxes pay for corporate bailouts and weapons, against the wishes of the vast majority.

The plummeting standards in education provide for a huge pool of ignorant, malleable citizens, which is very convenient when in a state of permanent war, but does not make for a strong body politic.

My point is, how long is it going to take people to realize this is not the way we want to live? How long are people going to sit by until they realize our outdated systems do not work?. Balance and clear-headed thinking are needed. Government has to stop treating its citizens like children, and the citizens, for their part, must take a larger part of the decision making process for the greater good. Citizen participation is essential.

Remember that we are the government, we are the economy, we are the nation.

We do not get the government we deserve, we get the government that we are willing to tolerate.

Canada in Afghanistan, Opium and the War on Terror

2008-09-17T13:15:00.022-04:00

The easiest and most logical way to solve the Afghan débacle, is to let the Pashtuns harvest the poppies they are already growing, and sell them in a government market, to be used for the production of medicinal opiate derivatives and analgesics. These farmers would have something to do other than shoot at foreign soldiers, and the war would be over. They could make money legally, raise a family, and have a reason to live. The government would have a cash crop to help pay for the reconstruction of a country that has been at war for thirty years.

But that is unlikely to happen because big chemical companies don't want the extra competition. The excuses thrown to the media, however, conform to the current stance on drugs. We might have been a little distracted of late, but there still is a "War on Drugs".

So we are back to square one, the War on Terror, and Canada's military and humanitarian involvement in Afghanistan. There are three options here. Either this is a real war, which entails enacting conscription and shipping over one million troops to get this over with in a timely and decisive way. We can squat on Afghan soil with a brigade or two for the next hundred years with a slow painful stream of bloodletting, in which case we'll finally get tired of shipping our troops home in body bags, and bring them home. Or we pull our troops out now, and let the Americans fight their "war on terror" on their own. The choice is ours to make. I say we let our brave soldiers come home. What say you? What say our politicians?

The Idiocy of Polls

2008-09-17T13:15:00.021-04:00

In view of the recent polls that suggest Stephen Harper's conservatives have a comfortable lead over the opposition parties, I have just one thing to say. Polls are nonsense. I can find at least three other polls online, conducted during the same period, with the conservatives and the liberals neck and neck. So what's the deal?

According to Jean Baudrillard "Polls manipulate the undecidable. Do they affect votes? True or false? Do they yield exact photographs of reality, or mere tendencies, or a refraction of this reality in a hyperspace of simulation...?... it is ultimately only members of the political classes who believe in them... this is not due to a particular stupidity (although we can't rule this out), but because the polls are homogeneous to the way contemporary politics operate. Ultimately though, who else does [believe in polls]? It is the burlesque spectacle of the hyperrepresentative (that is, not representative at all) political sphere that people savour and sample through opinion polls and the media. There is a jubilation proper to this spectacular nullity, and the final form that it takes is that of statistical contemplation. Such contemplation, moreover, is always coupled, as we know, with a profound disappointment - the species of disillusion that the polls provoke by absorbing all public speaking, by short-circuiting every means of expression".

In other words, don't believe the hype, learn to think for yourself and make up your own damn mind about the issues.