‘Not mistletoe and holly
To ward off melancholy
Carols in the chapel
Plum pudding and crabapple.
But to camp for a week
By a mountain creek
With fresh taken trout
And tinned pears to eat
With tea boiled in a billy
And the morepork in the gully.’ – James K Baxter
Consumerism is the ultimate neoliberal cult and watching the addicted masses pilgrimage to the temples of induced desire to sacrifice their hard earned cash on the altars of Boxing Day Sales.
We are subject to a never ending propaganda sales pitch convincing us that we are ugly and incomplete until we purchase this amazing thing that will give us status and sex appeal.
Our loneliness and internal doubts are manipulated every day in a ceaseless war for your attention.
Our sadness, our fears, our demons are all exploited mercilessly to keep us buying shit.
The pandemic’s lockdown forced a pause in the desperation driven capitalism and demanded a scrutiny of the quality of our rate race lives.
For many, that has dramatically reshaped their perspectives.
We need to go further.
Consumerism must die because the biosphere it exploits is dying…
The Earth, as we know it, is fucked. We’re currently at 417 parts per million of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, up from 280 ppm pre-capitalism. And that’s still not enough to satiate the shrieking, sucking mouth of the market.
Russia sees the melting Arctic and has decided this is a wonderful opportunity to extract the region’s hitherto inaccessible oil. Burning this will melt the Arctic further, making more oil available, in a virtuous circle of suicide. While making false promises in the fight against the climate crisis, America took the lead in crude oil production last year. Right behind us are the world’s other oil producers, from the despots of Saudi Arabia to the bland democracy of Canada. It’s like a “Murder on the Orient Express”-style mystery, where humanity is killed by every passenger.
It’s getting pretty close to night-night time for ocean life, most of the insects on Earth, half of the birds, too. Oh, and a third of the trees. When this will take out people is hard to predict, just as you never know which piece you have to remove to cause everything to collapse in a game of Jenga.
If you find this distressing, consider the more distressing fact that even if we develop massive amounts of green energy and stop global warming, capitalism will still probably destroy a livable biosphere.
…New Zealand is the Shire. We can not see Mordor coming.
We must turn our fiddling while Rome burns into a haka!
This is the only Santa I support, Father Marx…
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Another pic from Martyn’s family photo album
Agree with Señor Bomber. Zombie shopping “as directed” is a rather pathetic display of indoctrination and commodity fetishism (as Marx predicted). Sure a lot of people mean well, but
We are in a whole new situation from the 19th and 20th Centuries, when the scientific consensus on the effects of industrial society on the planet had not reached critical mass as it has now. Tipping points are being reached and cross species virus transmission is a thing thanks to extinctions and habitat destructions.
• Rebuild a fighting central labour organisation to put some steel and class left focus back into all unions
• Form a united Aotearoa NZ Marxist Party based on Marxism and Eco Socialism to provide the ideological heft and leadership that class collaborationist organisations just can’t, and which the NZ working class, alienated, and middle class need
• Run a non stop campaign based on community organising, aimed at new gen voters, and sidelined boomers out for revenge and justice.
Note to the usual suspects: don’t even bother invoking the degenerate workers states of Eastern Europe as some critique of future communism. The Fledging workers states never had a chance thanks to imperialist attacks, interventions, blockades and internal problems. Capital and Finance Capital since the end of the USSR have had 30 years to show what they are made of–and have they what!–barely 20 individuals owning more wealth than the poorest 50% of world citizens, mass starvation, armed conflicts galore, backwards anti women societies, what an exemplar.
Capitalism is a rotten system kept going by massive armed forces, security apparatus and the ideological war–boss class funded media channels. Make 2023 your year to join the anticapitalists.
The Earth is not “fucked”. Only the current parasites inhabiting it.
but it’s worth repeating what he actually wrote, “The Earth, as we know it, is fucked.”
As we know it, yes, but, also it’s just as nature designed it…adaptable, without favour or prejudice. It will simply get rid of us and shape it for the next species…
The T shirt could better read “All I want returned for Christmas…”
Capitalism drives innovation, scientifuc research, medical advancements, desire to better one self, increased wealth. Socialism leads us in the opposite direction, and does not allow individual capabilities to flourish.
Capitalism has to be controlled for best outcomes. If christmas has become a symbol of wasteful spending, then it is due to weakness of character, and lack of leadership in society.
People think that possessing more material items will make them happier, and use xmas as an excuse to spend more and more. Nothing stopping people from having an honest conversation with family and friends, and stop useless gift giving.
Too right Benny. Capitalism is a two edged sword. And you’re on the money too about commodity fetishism. A lot of the stuff is big toys, and let’s be honest, without washing machines, microwaves and a dishwasher we would we be, but much of the stuff is just wasteful spending – a mirage of desire. I’m getting ancient. I can remember my mother painting eggs at Easter and receiving wooden toys at Christmas, not made by Santa but by folk in the local community. But commodity fetishism was on the heals of my youth. And now its business.
Eventually Capitalism drives us of a cliff, innovations and all..
Leaving aside their consumer personas the workers in my family had a day off and enjoyed a relaxed meal together in the middle of the day. Back to the grind soon enough.
The only way to fix it..is to stop buying shit…note how much better the earth was during the COVID pandemic and I rest my case.
Historically, since Marx and Engels wrote their manifesto, whenever the workers have managed to own the means of production it has merely been implementing the exact same model of resource depleting, polluting, eco-destructive industrial madness, just with different management structures and which were eventually run by psychopathic dictators.
Marx did understand the tragedy of the commodification of ‘nature’ and the dispossession of those communities living in closer connection to the land than mere commodified labour for capital, but concerns about the collapse of the environment were far from the minds of Lenin or Mao.
Eco-destructive capitalism has won, and now the end of the world is less to be feared than the end of capitalism.
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