Along with everyone else so far, I found Smythe an especially productive addition to the conversation - he opened up a number of questions for me, and suggested some interesting ways of thinking about Marxism in the era of flexible accumulation. Marx, while he certainly made rational predictions, couldn't actually see into the future - and capitalism has made some pretty spectacular moves in order to avoid its demise. Giving people the illusion of choice and leisure when they are merely reproducing their own labor power is one specatacular and perverse move that has allowed capitalism to survive the major crises of the 20th century - and it seems the culture of choice intensifies each time.
There are a bunch of questions that go along with this, but given my current frustration at being bombarded with political ads (even though I don't have cable and barely watch TV), I'd like to ask what effect this culture of choice may have had on our political system. On p. 12, Smythe writes that "Monopoly capitalist marketing practice has has a sort of seismic, systemic drift towards "impulse purchasing." Quoting Linder, he adds that "[advertising] serves to provide quasi-information for people who lack time to acquire the genuine insights" (13). I don't think I'm suggesting anything new if I say that this same principle applies to politics - not just in ads, but in the boiled-down, time-saving "sound bites" that structure political rhetoric all over the place. If we begrudgingly accept that politics for most voters is a matter of either brand loyalty or impulse purchase, does that imply that, like Smythe's consumerism, "choice" is merely an illusion?
By the way, you really can buy political party "brands" - that's what the picture is. They suggest you use them on steaks, but I think their mere existence suggests far more disturbing uses.
No comments:
Post a Comment