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don’t buy into the illusion that capitalism is so self-organizing and organic. it requires the direct protection and supervision of a nationwide military and a police force -multiple police forces actually - to protect capital.
Well it can’t commodify me! Oh wait.
Sorry, I got myself worked up.
This is why I became comfort not owning things
Well, things would exist whether you’re in a capitalist economic system or not. People would make music and label their genre. People would write books and want to sell them. The real difference is who gets the profits.
It’s also how driven the profits are. All the choices on the way, are they directed for maximum profit or for good. And many things that are made didn’t need to be made, and wouldn’t if people didn’t care to buy them. The effort instead could have gone into good things.
The Black Mirror episode “Fifteen Million Merits” makes this point in a (typically) very chilling way.
Create a problem then sell the solution. Simple as
Infinite growth in a finite system is the definition of cancer. And like a cancer it will keep poisoning us, and must be cut out and eradicated.
Not the greatest dude, but had a sick quote that sums up this post:
“The Capitalists will sell us the rope with which we will hang them” - Vladimir Lenin
“A film like Wall-E exemplifies what Robert Pfaller has called ‘interpassivity’: the film performs our anti-capitalism for us, allowing us to continue to consume with impunity. The role of capitalist ideology is not to make an explicit case for something in the way that propaganda does, but to conceal the fact that the operations of capital do not depend on any sort of subjectively assumed belief. It is impossible to conceive of fascism or Stalinism without propaganda - capitalism can proceed perfectly well, in some ways better, without anyone making a case for it.”
– Capitalist Realism, Mark Fisher
Drag doesn’t believe in money. What’s capital gonna do about that?
This is why talking about things like government services just wash over conservatives. I was talking about transit and a common reply I get is “it’s not even profitable!”. It’s intrinsically linked that if it doesn’t make money, it’s valueless… it doesn’t matter if people use it, or if people need it, if it breaks even, or even if it’s designed to run at a slight loss because it’s value is more important than profit. People have lost the ability to understand that profit is not always the goal.
“Capital has the ability to subsume all critiques into itself. Even those who would ‘critique’ capital end up ‘reinforcing’ it instead…”
very true detective
Oh i know so many people who are into vanity. Everything goes as long as there’s no point in it.
How do you fight against it?
Buy my anti-capitalism book
And my anti-capitalism axe
They’re taking the hobbits to IPO! To IPO! To IPO!
Tell me, where is Gandalf, for I much desire to speak with him.
“A stock exchange of Mordor…”
How much?
Wait. Before you read their anti-capitalism book, you need to read my ‘How to Read Anti-capitalism Books’ book. If you act quickly we can get a BOGO offer with both books for only 3 easy payments of $19.95.
On a larger scale? Through organizing and engaging in communities, politics and unions. No one can stop it alone.
On a personal scale?
Stop consuming more than you need. Maintain what you already own. Don’t buy it because it’s better than what you have, if what you have is already good enough. Buy second hand when you can. Lend and loan with friends when it comes to seldomly used tools.Buy maintainable stuff instead of the cheap copy that has no repairability (Think of the boots theory and don’t get tricked into spending more in the long term just to spend less now).
And the hardest bit would be to stop comparing yourself and your life with that of those around you, I think that the rat race is the main driver of consumption together with all that wealth peacocking.
depends on where you live
When you commodify all the people’s wants and needs, you commodify the people.
Or, to look at it the other way round:
When you commodify people, you will commodify all their wants and needs.
What are we to them capitalists but (wage) slaves?
