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workersolidarity · 4 years

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Throwaway Culture: A Marxist Perspective

I never imagined I'd be interested in anything a Pope might have to say, but this caught my eye after Googling: Throwaway culture. It was something I had been thinking about all day.

I'm not religious in any way, and there are points of disagreement I have with how Pope Francis has framed Throwaway Culture, but he also gave voice to an aspect of Throwaway Culture I've personally been focusing on, our trained willingness to toss other human beings away like garbage.

So first my disagreement with the quotes above. Throwaway Culture isn't something that rose up out of nowhere from the bottom up. The set of ideas behind the development of the Throwaway Culture was something encouraged and developed from above. It began with the evolution of our Capitalist economy from one based on industrial production, into one driven largely by domestic consumer spending.

Beginning after the Second World War, consumerism began when US mega-corporations, hoping to take advantage of a better educated, wealthier population by encouraging families aspiring to be part of the expansion of the Petty-Bourgeoisie (Lower Middle Class), to buy disposable products that could simoly be thrown away after one use and replaced by subsequent purchases. This made life easier for busy Petty Bourgeois households to focus on their family, rather than the tedious cleaning tasks they were previously accustomed to.

At the same time, this fueled a massive economic expansion as the Resources and other spoils of America's development into an Imperialist Power poured back into the domestic economy. This created millions of stable, well paying jobs, funded further economic development and infrastructure, and further reinforced America's new status on the global stage as the major dominating Super Power.

Following the crises of the mid-70's and into the Reagan years, the Bourgeois politicians, grown fat after years of economic boom, were all too happy to oblige the further Corporate push towards Consumerism and the single use economy. Policy was used, not to discourage single use products and consequently heavy trash producing economy, but instead the State actively encouraged this evolution.

Movies and media began reflecting the turn towards Consumerism, encouraging a new culture, one of post-modern aloofness, cynicism and sarcasm. A brave new society was being built by cultural elites. They were creating a world where people were expected to be disgusted by the sentimentality and emotion of human interaction. It slowly became culturally taboo to feel deeply for anyone else but oneself. Sentimentality was treated as a sign of weakness, and by extension, someone who could never succeed under the Neoliberal Capitalist order. They'd managed to repackage an old idea (Classical Liberalism or laissez faire Capitalism) into a new ideological framework dominated by free markets, deregulation, global free trade and specialization, consumerism and financialization.

Everywhere you look, society tells you the only things worth investing yourself in are economic success and fame. In other words, public acknowledgement of your economic success, thereby enshrining a kind of reality television mindset into the id of the public. Everything else is just an expression of weakness.

Which brings us to today. A time when society seems to be breaking down. Many people are deeply disatisfied with their lives. Instead of being showered with fame and fortune, most people have had to experience extreme economic uncertainty, disappointment with their career, and an inability to accrue enough money to satisfy their habit of trying to buy their way to happiness. Just as we'd been trained since childhood to do.

Unfortunately, even the mountains of cheap plastic crap overflowing from landfills hasn't exactly left very many people feeling fulfilled.

For most people, this brave new world filled with opportunity and free wheeling human interaction, has turned out to be even more alienating than the 19th Century factories Marx once observed. Except today that alienation extends well beyond the workplace.

Despite spending endless hours a day perusing social media and bragging about ones latest good time, people are more likely than ever before to feel lonely and listless. The cool cynicism encapsulated in so many movies and television characters, has swiftly turned into bitter resentment, loneliness, depression, poverty and addiction.

Where once detachment seemed a hallmark of the successful Capitalist, the ironic optimism people once felt from leaving behind human emotions, particularly emotions such as love, simpathy and empathy, has devolved into a society willing to throw families living in poverty onto the streets, only to arrest them the next day for the crime of being homeless and visible.

Instead of Liberating society from life's ills, Throwaway Culture has led to a society willing to tolerate even the most offensive of injustices, stripping away the humanity for those who's fortunes never rose alongside Neoliberal Capitalism.

Consumerism, as encouraged by the newly reformed ideology of Neoliberalism, manifested itself most obviously in the 90's culture of Post-Modernism. Post-Modernism soon devolved into today's Throwaway Culture. Today, workers tolerate some of the most horrific conditions under Capitalism since the end of the Guilded Age.

A society with a high tolerance for extreme exploitation, oppression and abuse at the hands of both employers and the Bourgeois State was always a critical goal of the ruling elite. The Neoliberal ideology was built on, and driven into the minds of the masses as the tool with which to train the workforce into developing this tolerance, and it has largely succeeded. Workers today are more willing to blame themselves for their economic failures, as opposed to recognizing a system specifically designed to create the illusion of opportunity, while nearly always leading to economic mediocrity at best, and brutal destitution at worst.

That same Neoliberal alienating logic even extends to those around us. When someone loses a job,or can't pay their bills, or goes to jail for minor unpaid fines, we tell ourselves that they must not have worked hard enough. Why should we help these people when they won't help themselves? Yet, when we experience these same conditions for ourselves, instead of waking up to the reality of the inherent inequalities of Capitalism, we are trained to blame ourselves. Every economic failure we live through, no matter how absurd, how unavoidable, we see it as a failure on our part. We must have done something wrong right?

Neoliberal ideology has so infected the public mindset, that we fault ourselves for even the cruelest of outcomes, despite knowing we did everything we could, worked as hard as possible, and still we often suffer severe economic distress despite doing everything right.

It's been drilled into us from the time we are toddlers, that Capitalism offers success to anyone willing to work hard and make good decisions. (Good decisions as determined by Capitalist interests). Yet, even when this idea proves to be false, we blame ourselves rather than question Capitalism.

All of these markers of today's society are a direct result of unfettered Capitalism run amok. The Bourgeoisie and their Bourgeois State have so thoroughly manipulated the public consiousness, that we find ourselves steadfastly clinging to the assumptions of Neoliberal ideology. Capitalism has become indistinguishable in the public consiousness from ideas like "freedom", "democracy" and "the pursuit of happiness".

These buzzwords have served to make the Capitalist System omnipotent in the mind of the public. It has effectively taken the Capitalism out of the arena of politics. No longer is Capitalism something to be debated. It has officially become sacrosanct, scientific fact, and essential to personal freedom.

Taking all these assumptions of Neoliberalism to their logical conclusion brings us to today's cutting edge of Capital expansion and reproduction.

Anything can be a product to be sold on the market, even you and your most personal information, and the market is infallible. So if cruelty is a side effect of Markets, well than cruelty must be acceptable too.

As Marx once said, it's either Socialism or Barbarism. Well, the results are in and Barbarism is now a dominant feature within the frame of this Throwaway Culture and Neoliberal Capitalism.

So when Pope Francis talks about people individually taking responsibility to change their behavior, it's not that he's wrong. But he's purposely avoiding looking at the cause of today's culture. He is, like it or not, part of the elite. And the elite cannot effectively criticise, or criticise at all, other sections of the elite. That's why it has always been up to the Working Class to lead the Proletarian Revolution to Socialism. The Petty-Bourgeois reformers in Organizations such as the DSA cannot be depended on to challenge the basic tenets of Capitalism.

As much as I admire our DSA Comrades for their hard work, they seem incapable of acknowledging the Nature of Capitalism and the Bourgeois State. To understand Capitalism would mean to understand why Reformism and Electoralism within the context of the Bourgeois State can never succeed.

In much the same way, Pope Francis is incapable of confronting the threat Capitalism poses to his own Church. He neglects to see (or just ignores) the way the Church as been deeply intertwined with the fortunes of the Bourgeoisie, depending on wealthy benefactors to pay for the day to day operations of the Church.

Taking individual responsibility is something that must happen after we've cast aside the Bourgeoisie. It's something that must be confronted eventually, but only after we've begun to build a new Revolutionary Socialist society. A Socialist society must be built on empathy, collective success, collective liberation, collective wellbeing and collective responsibility. Only then is it warranted to even mention personal responsibility, which has always been another buzzword for the Capitalist Class.

Throwaway Culture has been so incredibly successful at raising the individual above all else (think the "rugged individualism" of the American ideal pushed upon us all our lives).

This is, of course, a necessary feature of Capitalist domination and exploitation. To control the masses, the Bourgeoisie must divide the masses, and the easiest way of sustaining and normalizing a divided society is by creating a culture centered around the individual while minimizing into insignificance the importance of the collective, the importance of community, and even minimizing the importance of family and friends.

This has been so successful that most human relationships have become so shallow as to be practically meaningless. This of course making it easier to allow Throwaway Culture to move from an attitude towards society generally, into an attitude towards even the most important relationships a person can experience in life.

After all, in order for someone to find it acceptable to throwaway even those closest to her, then her relationships with them must be reduced to simple, meaningless economic transactions between herself and those around her. (think of our holiday "traditions" that always seem to require consuming large amounts of disposable products, overcooking massive meals and giving of gifts. All of which require prolific spending that is treated as a competition)

This is essentially where we've arrived today. All relationships are being reduced to simple and meaningless economic transactions. And after all, as we've been trained to do all our lives, our economic interactions are always disposable.

Pope Francis is right to bring these issues into the fore for the world. The Church, just as Communities and families do, requires a certain degree of importance placed on human relationships. The Church brings people together under one roof on a weekly basis, and must convince them all that this religious Community is at least equal in importance to their economic concerns.

This where the analysis by, and strategies of, Historical Materialists and those employed by the Church for its own survival meet. Generally, throughout the history of Capitalism, the needs of the Bourgeoisie have run parallel with the needs of the Religious elites. But Throwaway Culture, Consumerism, and Neoliberal Capitalism are becoming antithetical to the very survival of the Church.

And I'm not necessarily calling the Pope an Opportunist. For all I know he may truly believe that Throwaway Culture and Neoliberal Capitalism go against the teachings of the Church. Still, we have yet to see either Pope Francis or the Church more generally turn against Capitalist ideology.

If Pope Francis and the Church really wants to challenge the Culture of Consumerism, just like Socialists he must name the enemy of the Collective: Capitalism, Imperialism and the International Bourgeoisie.

Additionally, no amount of idealism, religious or otherwise, will help us to defeat the Reactionary forces of Imperialism. Only a deep Materialist analysis and understanding of how we got here can open the eyes of the masses, and help us to develop the strategies and tactics we will need to defeat Capitalism on an international scale.

We didn't arrive at this point when Throw Away Culture dominates the ideological underpinnings of society overnight. Nor can we expect to sweep generations worth of manipulation, historical lies, and Bourgeois propaganda under the rug.

Opening the eyes of the masses will take time, and unfortunately time isn't on our side. A multitude of crises are converging more quickly than anyone could have predicted. Yet, for those of us living in the heart of the Imperialist world, we are vexed by the least developed Proletariat in nearly two centuries.

How we can develop and educate the Proletariat of the Western world fast enough to avoid complete disaster on a planetery scale? This is something we must organize around and work through.

The time for Academic Marxist papers and years of drawn out debates are over. Climate Change and sea level rise are occuring many times faster than anyone predicted just a couple decades ago. Capital, instead of working to solve this Global problem, is actively making things worse. Meanwhile our Throwaway Culture is corrupting the very souls of the masses. If change must occur quickly to save the planet, then the human race is headed in completely the opposite direction.

We must unite as Workers and begin the hard work of educating and organizing the Proletariat. We have to find a way of uniting and organizing behind a single Vanguard Party, and developing our Praxis without delay.

Capitalism is sucking the very humanity out of us all. Unless we act quickly with an urgency that matches the scale of the problems we face, and unless we put aside our differences and our final visions for the Socialist society to come, instead working together to develop the fledgeling Socialist Movement, than it may soon be too late to change course.

I want to live in a Society that values empathy. A Society that embraces the human condition and our human emotions. Not a culture that ignores the trashing of our planet, embraces greed and detachment, and assumes the consequences of our actions can be solved by idealistic notions of just moving to another planet once we've trashed and exhausted the resources of this one.

A want a world where those living in the Global South aren't starving while Americans throw away tens of thousands of tons of food a day, just to keep the homeless and hungry from getting a free meal out of our trash cans. How disgusting a society are we willing to live with?

And so even though I am motivated by objectively Idealistic notions of Community. I turn to Historical Materialism to understand how we got here, and how we may fix it.

Socialism offers the only way out.

I'm not so naive as to think simply appealing to our humanity is going to change anything. Even if suddenly the great masses of workers agreed with those appeals tomorrow, we would still be at the mercy of Capitalist exploitation, oppression and a Bourgeoisie ready and willing to use any destructive and violent means to enforce it's will. A simple look at the Middle East shows Imperialism is alive and well, and what it looks like when Western Bourgeois interests are threatened.

A strategy and set of tactics must be developed. Theory is only as good as the praxis it's used for. We must also provide for the development, education, and organization of the Working Class.

Lastly, we must be ready for massive resistance by the Bourgeoisie. They will almost certainly react with violence to any major challenges to their power and the system they've spent more than three centuries building. Potentially a violent Revolution and even civil war on a massive scale must be prepared for. Socialists cannot expect to passively win this war. One look back on Proletarian Revolutionary History should tell us all we need to know about what we must be ready for.

But NEVER forget Comrades, there's many many times more of us than their are of them! We will win the Revolution to come!

Solidarity Comrades

Workers of the world unite!

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