Anti-Capitalism and its discontents
An interesting aspect of contemporary protest movements is how short lived they are. Mostly this is the need to stay one step ahead of “the enemy” No-one expected road protestors to occupy trees and dig tunnels to prevent the bulldozers going about their work, but after a couple of years the enemy had developed techniques to stop them so new forms of protest were needed. Reclaim the Streets had the novel idea of getting hundreds of people to suddenly dance on a major road and it worked. I was at the RTS in Birmingham for the G8 summit three years ago and it was an amazing day. The Mayday Monopoly thing has its roots in those events but it will be a shadow of it’s former self. It’s time has passed. RTS has disbanded and only those who want to fight with thousands of riot police, or those who are so ideologically narrow that they think a lasting revolution can be triggered by a street protest, will turn up.
This is all common knowledge and can bring out the cynic in you. It doesn’t matter what you do, eventually “they” will figure out ways to stop you doing it and turn you into a criminal.
This has been troubling me for a while now. It seems like the whole anti-capitalism movement has been, in effect, commercialised. There didn’t used to be anti-capitalists. There were socialists and anarchists and other easily categorisable ideologies for you to slot into in the age old battle between “them” and “us” but the anti-capitalism thing? Where did that come from? By definition it shouldn’t be possible to slot it into the ideological framework, especially when the world runs on capitalism. If you try then you end up with the cartoon anarchist image of either someone who lives in a commune and doesn’t relate to the rest of society or someone who thinks they can grab all they want and not pay for it. The latter has been blasted all over the press making those of us who hold anti-capitalist ideas feel rather alienated and powerless.
We need to try and define what anti-capitalism actually is. Mostly it’s a personal conviction that something is wrong here and it’s making the world a bad place. It’s also a sense that it’s very hard to change anything without it being either co-opted or crushed. Unlike many other ideologies it’s a very personal thing but it’s also very aware of the world that surrounds us. It’s when you look at the world and wish it didn’t work like this because it at best tarnishes and at worst destroys things you hold dear.
Anti-capitalism is the need to be human without corporate influence. It is the need not to have your life style branded. To be able to go to a coffee shop rather than Starbucks. To be treated as a human being rather than a consumer.
It is the desire not to be treated as a product or a resource but to be treated as a thinking human being. It is a need to be outside the cycle of customer-employer-manager-director-shareholder-customer with each one dehumanising the other in order to squeeze greater profits.
It is not perceiving everything as a product but respecting where stuff comes from and how it is made. The realisation that you cannot put a price on some things and that activities should not be seen as a way to make money. And it is the desire that should something new and exciting be created or invented it should not be tarnished by a short-term profit motive.
It is the need for mental space free from advertising and coercive manipulation. It is the desire to go into a shop and browse without being persuaded to buy things you don’t want. To be able to walk down a street without being bombarded with images telling you your life is incomplete and worthless.
It is the sense that there’s something missing from the mainstream media, that the truth isn’t being told. It comes from the confusion as to why the kid who was murdered down your road didn’t make the news and the realisation that his life wasn’t a valuable enough commodity to help sell newspapers.
It comes from walking into Nike Town or watching television or listening to commercial radio and seriously and with conviction asking “What the fuck does this actually, at the end of the day, in real terms, mean?”
That, my friends, is anti-capitalism. Anti-capitalism is not about dying your hair green and throwing rocks at policemen. It is not about defacing statues. It’s not even about getting on the streets and having a big party. All these things are symptoms of it, but they’re not the root cause.
Anti-capitalism is the realisation that something is wrong and it needs to be sorted out. It doesn’t mean not earning a wage or not buying stuff. It’s just the sense that there’s more to life than earning a wage and buying sutff and it shouldn’t be such a soul destroying process doing either of those two things.
Further reading:
Last weeks SchNews talks about why and how anti-capitalism is being demonised and criminalised by the government and media.
Naomi Klein’s No Logo is a good history of the last ten years. Yes it’s published by Rupert Murdoch but wouldn’t it be nice if it didn’t have to be and still made it into high street bookshops?
This is hopefully the first in a series of “proper articles” - ie not “I, I, I” pieces. Coming soon, The Internet.
This is the personal blog and main internet hub-thing for Pete Ashton. What you'll find here is a seemingly random collection of stuff I want to talk about and share. 
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