"It’s a class phenomena...robbery of one set of the population to the benefit of the other segment of the population," David’s Harvey’s analysis on the current crisis. A Financial Katrina - Remarks on the Crisis. What better way could there be to make your credit-crunch Christmas go with a bang!
Also, Harvey’s penultimate lecture (Lecture Twelve) on ‘So called Primitive Accumulation’ and his belief in redefining the term to ‘Accumulation by Dispossession’ is worth watching/listening to (even if you have not been following the series of lectures) as a way of understanding the current crisis within capitalism. And also for his belief that Marx may have been wrong in his formulation that this form of accumulation was restricted to a pre-history of capitalism and that it is still very much part of the modern make up of globalised capital:
Reading Marx’s Capital - Class 12, Chapters 26-33
A Short Christmas Message:
It’s nearly Christmas and, as a militant atheist and an all round miserable git, I suffer more than most at this time of year. As someone who is steadfast in their anti-consumerist outlook, this stance often results in me being mistaken for a tight-fisted bastard. Thus, I blame my tarnished reputation on Father Christmas.
Let’s think about why.
There’s this guy who can’t get a decent job for fifty weeks of the year, and yet for a couple of weeks he is suddenly elevated to a status beyond your own (especially in your child’s eyes) and thrust to the centre of attention in our precious shopping cathedrals. And then we dumb fuckers place our precious offspring on his knee and let him whisper in their ears alcohol-scented promises of sweets and toys in exchange for good behaviour. This is while across the country, goaded on by Murdoch’s tabloid newspapers, pitch-forked fuckers with placards and murder in their eyes are hunting out men offering similar inducements in towns all over England.
Furthermore, you work your fucking arse off all year; save or hammer the credit cards; get yourself in greater debt and wrap the chains of consumerism and wage slavery around you that bit tighter - to fight your way through the zombie-like masses to find the must-have gift for your child. You do all this and then have to tell them:
“No, no, no, my precious it is not I – a hard working stiff, a man stressed to the limits of his own sanity, through longer working hours and the need for greater production levels and greater surplus value - no, no, no, it is not I who brought you these magnificent examples of reified consumer goods. It was a total stranger! It was fucking Father Christmas! Yes, whilst you were sleeping (don’t tell the News of the World!) he invited himself into our house – via the obvious route, the fucking chimney! (I know it’s blocked, but use your imagination please!) And he then left you these beautifully wrapped presents. Oh don’t thank me my child. Thank Father Christmas! Thank Santa! I am but a humble prole, devoid of any magical qualities, doomed to walk the earth with only my labour to sell.”
Commodity fetishism and I’m discontent!
Let us forget the past traumas our mothers were put through for twelve fucking days and nights of Christmas, as they cooked, cleaned, cajoled, pestered, loved and fucking made sure that our Christmas would be a jolly, traditional affair. They put up with excessive alcohol abuse, came down late at night and turned off the discarded electrical items and fires, produced meal after meal and still somehow smiled and thanked the Lord Jesus Christ himself that we were home and safe and seemingly free to enjoy ourselves at her expense.
However, the myth of Christmas still speaks to us and does have some contemporary resonance. Let’s think about those little fucking elves working in polar sweatshops for the corporate stooge, Santa Fuckin Claus. Oh! Bob Geldof and his cronies won’t sing about them, will they! Santa the tyrant exploiting those poor elves, cracking the whip and demanding higher production levels and greater surplus values, so that spoilt European and North American children can get their new consoles; their new clothes; their new phones, which manage every task known to man these days - including toast-making – all the while Santa whips the fuck out of those poor little elves! Do they know it’s Christmas time? Fucking right they do! How’s that for a metaphor for our age, especially when so many of our great high street chains have been caught out recently posting record profits on the backs of child labour in Asia.
Yes, the myth of Christmas has many things to tell us about our own age. How do we get out of this current mess? Consume, consume, consume – and everything will be all right. Click your heels together three times and say: “There’s no system quite like capitalism, there is no system quite like…”
Have a good holiday. And may 2009 be a year of greater class struggle!
