{"id":1044,"date":"2019-03-11T15:29:17","date_gmt":"2019-03-11T15:29:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wsm.prolerat.org\/?page_id=1044"},"modified":"2019-10-21T16:02:30","modified_gmt":"2019-10-21T15:02:30","slug":"the-information-society-selling-the-system","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/www.worldsocialism.org\/wsm\/the-information-society-selling-the-system\/","title":{"rendered":"The information society: selling the system"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

This is a chapter from ‘Stop Supporting Capitalism – Start Building\nSocialism’ by Stan Parker, published by Bridge Books (2002). Published by\nagreement with the author.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n\n\n\n

\n\nCapitalism cannot live by bread alone – if \u2018bread\u2019 is a metaphor for \nthe whole range of goods and services produced and sold on the market. \nThe profit system needs the consuming time of workers as well as their \nproducing time (Harvey, 1982:448). And to make both capitalist \nproduction and consumption possible, it needs the appropriate consenting\n ideas of the vast mass of the population. This consent doesn\u2019t have to\n take the form of active support – apathetic or even despairing \nacquiescence will do.\n<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\nThe task facing the active proponents of capitalism is to sell the \nsystem to the mass of people – most obviously at election times but \nimplicitly at all other times. Increasingly sophisticated methods to do\n this are used in an increasingly \u2018information\u2019 society. We must first \nbe educated (trained would be a more accurate word to describe what \nreally goes on) to take our place in capitalist society. We must \nconsume as much as is profitable for \u2018business\u2019 to sell us. The mass \nmedia of communication are there to tell us what we should think and do.\n The mass media and hegemonic Cupertino of the subordinate mass combine\n to produce a culture of consumption.\n<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\nSo this chapter will examine four related processes designed to preserve\n and put an acceptable face on capitalism: education, the mass media, \nhegemony, and a culture of consumption.\n<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n\nEducation\n<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

\nEducation of the young is the first way in which they are given a \nforetaste of what life will be like when they reach adulthood. Most \nchildren are given a deceptively benign introduction to capitalist \nschooling. At first no pressure is put on them to do other than play \nand have their natural inquisitiveness and sense of adventure stimulated\n and satisfied. But this soon gives way to the real business of \neducation. Schooling takes the place of kindergarten. Some children \ndon\u2019t even have the benefit of kindergarten – they are thrown straight \ninto school. Starting with first year children, a concept called \n\u2018career education\u2019 has been used to permeate all academic subjects at \nall levels of education:\n<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\nThe whole curriculum, from start to finish, is conducted within an \natmosphere of competition and stress, together with a weeding-out \nprocess which segregates those with supposedly superior talents from \nthose less fortunate. This is accomplished through the use of tests, \nexaminations and grading, all of which have a direct bearing upon \nultimate occupations and potential earnings. Such an environment \nprevents the pleasurable pursuit of education as a primary end in \nitself. The young find themselves involved in an intensive training \nprogramme, presented under the guise of education, which will ultimately\n affect the price of their labour-power and in many instances can prove \ndisastrous healthwise (Ghebre, 1994:107).\n<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\nThus schools – or at least the general run of state schools and even \nmany of the fee-paying schools – produce minimally skilled workers for \nwage or salary labour. These institutions \u2018educate\u2019 workers to an \nideology of compliance. Schools play an essential role in maintaining \nthe status quo. \u2018A capitalist society requires certain general human \ntraits and institutional features, and schools function to fulfil these \ndemands\u2019 (Liston, 1988:16).\n<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\nEducation for life has long been a goal set up and discussed by teachers\n and others. Capitalism is increasingly eroding that role, transforming\n it into education for employment (or unemployment). The idea is \u2018that \nschool should equip children from all social backgrounds with a greater \nunderstanding and experience of the world of work, and in the process \nequip them with social and technical skills required by employers\u2019 \n(Cohen, 1990:51).\n<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\nThe raw material of education – the acquisition and evaluation of \nknowledge – is strongly influenced by its capitalist environment. As \nCohen ruefully admits, \u2018Really useful knowledge has come to mean skills \nwhich help you get on and make it, not insights that help you combine \nwith others to build a better world\u2019 (1990:52). The privatisation of \nthe public realm, the permeation of market values into the most intimate\n reaches of personal and social life, is apparent at all levels of \neducation.\n<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\nPrivatisation is particularly evident in academia itself. Academics are\n increasingly obliged to act (and some no doubt willingly act) as agents\n of capital within the public sector (Slaughter and Leslie, 1997:9).. \nThey look for commercial funding for projects that are tied to national \npolicy institutions and are partnered by prestigious firms, usually \nnational or multinational in scope. Their own advancement is no longer \ndependent primarily on publications. Instead it depends at least partly\n on success in marketing activity. The scope of subject relevance is \nlimited tacitly to exclude challenge of the status quo.\n<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\nThe University of the Third Age (U3A) is a network of voluntary \neducational groups catering for the \u2018serious leisure\u2019 needs of older \npeople. It is proud of its emphasis on learning for its own sake, on \nnot issuing paper qualifications linked to the labour market. I \nattended a U3A economics group meeting on multinational corporations and\n listened patiently while details of the structure and operation of \nthose corporations were given but not examined in any critical way. I \nput a question which suggested that a system based on meeting need, not \nseeking profit, would abolish multinational corporations. I was ruled \nout of order. Most of the audience indicated their approval of that \nruling and the rest looked sheepish. Capitalism had done a good job on \nthem.\n<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n\nThe mass media of communication\n<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

\nBefore the invention of newspapers, radio and television, people had to \nrely for information, knowledge and entertainment mostly on unmediated \ninteraction with other human beings. We know little about the formation\n of public opinion in pre-mass media times. There were teachers and \npreachers and grapevines along which news and views could travel. Those\n lines of communication still exist today, but they are overshadowed by \nthe power of the mechanical and electronic media to tell us what is \ngoing on in the world, what politicians decide when faced with problems,\n and which camp the multitude should follow.\n<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\nDuring the last few decades, and in parts of the world often described \nas economically developed, far-reaching social and economic changes have\n taken place. From having a majority of the working class making goods,\n the emphasis has shifted to providing services and handling information\n in various ways. In a word, industrial capitalism has changed to \ninformation capitalism. This doesn\u2019t mean that the exploitation of \nlabour by capital has ceased, or even been diminished. Rather, the \nnature of that exploitation has changed, as Morris-Susuki (1997:65) \nspells out:\n<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\nIndustrial capitalism, based on direct exploitation of the manufacturing\n workforce, is transmuted by the process of automation into a new system\n where exploitation increasingly encompasses all those involved in the \ncreation of social knowledge and in its transmission from generation to \ngeneration. Against the idea of a \u2018post-industrial\u2019 or \u2018information\u2019 \nsociety which has spontaneously and painlessly become \u2018post-capitalist\u2019,\n we can counterpose the idea of \u2018information capitalism\u2019 where high \nlevels of automation and the \u2018softening of the economy\u2019 coexist with new\n and widening spheres of exploitation of the many by the few.\n<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\nRuling class ownership and control of physical capital – land, \nfactories, railways, etc. – has not ended. Instead the powers and \nprivileges associated with that ownership have been vastly increased and\n secured by extension of that ownership to \u2018information\u2019 capital \n(newspaper, radio and television companies, and so on). Some \ninformation is regarded by economists as a \u2018free good\u2019, but the means of\n mass communication are today certainly not free. Furthermore, those \nmeans of communication are jealously guarded by national governments on \nbehalf of their respective ruling classes. In times of war, the \ntelevision stations of the enemy are included in the targets to be \n\u2018taken out\u2019 as part of the campaign. As Coleman (1997:162) points out, \nthe control of free speech has become more humane, but new technology \nhas enabled it to become more subtle and effective:\n<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\nWhere once power elites severed the tongues of dissenters, perhaps now \nthe policy is to switch off the microphone; a more civilised, but no \nless undemocratic, form of gagging. If the modern resistance to \nunregulated discussion, in Britain if not elsewhere, draws the line well\n short of massacring workers in Manchester or surrounding the Hyde Park \ngates with police, we have yet to see what response there would be for a\n struggle for equal access to and control of the contemporary means of \nmass communication.\n<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\nThe interests of information capital seem to be best served, not by \ndenying workers all access to the media, but by allowing selected small \nminorities of them to have a piece of the action, to give the semblance \nof some measure of free speech. Thus we have phone-in radio programmes \nwhich purport to be \u2018the voice of the nation\u2019. But, as Coleman \n(1997:125) notes, \u2018Phone-ins often accentuate the gulf between the \nauthoritative expert and the humbly questioning laity.\u2019 Television \nconsumer watchdog programmes serve the same deceptive purpose. A few \ncustomers have their complaints against inefficient or unscrupulous \ncompanies upheld and compensated for. This is designed to strengthen \nour confidence in making purchases where we are subject only to normal, \nrather than exceptional, exploitation.\n<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\nDefenders of the mass media point to the choice available to consumers \nas justification for its increasing role in telling us what to think and\n what to buy. But the 500 television channels promised for every \nhousehold will bring only an illusion of variety and choice (Martin and \nSchumann, 1997;18). Choice at the margin hides denial of choice at the \ncore. If all candidates at an election stand only for slightly \ndifferent ways of running capitalism, then those who wish to reject the \nprofit system and live in some other kind of society are given no choice\n at all.\n<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\nA mass in its most human form is happily co-operative, giving and \ntaking, sharing, creative in its actions and experiences, stressing the \nindissoluble nature of the individual and society. A mass in its least \nhuman form is cruelly competitive, isolated, ignorant, easily inflamed \nby base emotions, elevating and glorifying the individual above society,\n empowering and blindly following power-hungry and often psychopathic \nleaders to destructive ends.\n<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\nProfit society likes things to be privatised, not socialised. \nBusiness-friendly governments – there is no other kind – promote the \nmass communication industry. According to Keane (1991:192), \nprivatisation of the means of communication under state control\n<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\nis likely to penetrate the heart of everyday life – reshaping our \nlanguage, our sense of time and space, our basic likes and loves. It \nmay be that citizens will no longer invest any hopes in public life. \nPerhaps they will amuse themselves to death, spending their spare time \n\u2018grazing\u2019 the new abundance of pre-censored, commercialized radio, \ntelevision, newspapers and magazines. Perhaps they will be persuaded to\n privatize themselves, to regard politics as a nuisance, to transform \nthemselves silently and unprotestingly from citizens to mobile and \nprivate consumers.\n<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\nOne of the most popular types of radio and television programme is the \nsoap opera. The label \u2018soap opera\u2019 was first attached to dramatic sagas\n broadcast by American radio in the 1930s. Drama of this sort was found\n to be the cheapest way of filling in the gaps between the commercials \nfor detergents which sponsored the shows. The business has expanded \nenormously. Every week the studios receive messages of love, hate, \nadvice and enquiry about people who do not exist. Soap operas are \nworthy of close critical analysis, and Jay (1986:167) offers just that:\n<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\nMost soap operas, for most of the time, play a part in confirming social\n prejudices which support capitalism. Implicit in the drama, or as the \ncritics say \u2018written into the sub-text\u2019, are all sorts of notions about \nthe world we live in\u2026 They include the ideas that people suffer from \nsomething horrible called \u2018human nature\u2019 – an incurable condition that \ncan only be softened or controlled but never removed. It means that \npeople are innately anti-social or irrational. Other assumptions \ninclude the idea that the majority of people are not intelligent or \nresponsible enough to exist socially without bosses, political leaders \nand police forces to keep them in order.\n<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\nThe role of soap operas in promoting acquiescence in the profit system \nis also recognised by Chomsky (1991:370), who links that role with the \nelectoral process and the public education system, both of which have \nthe same goal:\n<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\nThe citizens in a capitalist democracy must be diverted by emotionally \npotent oversimplifications, marginalized, and isolated. Ideally, each \nperson should be alone in front of the television screen, watch sports, \nsoap operas or commercials, deprived of organizational structures that \npermit individuals lacking resources to discover what they think and \nbelieve in interaction with others, to formulate their own concerns and \nprograms, and to act to realise them. They can be permitted, even \nencouraged, to ratify the decisions of their betters in periodic \nelections. The rascal multitude are the proper targets of the mass \nmedia and a public education system geared to obedience and training in \nneeded skills, including the skill of repeating patriotic slogans on \ntimely occasions.\n<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\nIf individuals are isolated when subject to largely one-way \ncommunication, they are cut off from sources which could challenge the \nvalidity of the overt and covert messages received. The audiences for \nsoap operas, newspaper stories and political pronouncements are guided \nsubtly towards conformity. They are made to feel uncomfortable about \nchallenging anything beyond the superficial differences in what is \npresented to them. Stratman (n.d.:49) sums up this situation:\n<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\nThe media generate a kind of false community, dominated by corporate \nvalues and corporate images of the world. To join your fellow humans in\n this community, all you have to do is surrender your real feelings and \nvalues to agree with whatever it is that the media say that other people\n think\u2026 however contemptuous of the politicians and corporate leaders \nwho parade across the screen, however a person feels about the reality \npresented by the media, he can still be made to feel that \u2018nobody feels \nthis way but me\u2019.\n<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n\nHegemony\n<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

\nDiscussion of the mass media leads us to consider another and related \nfeature of capitalist society, the way in which its victims are \npersuaded to cooperate in their own exploitation. It is one thing to \nhave a substantial part of your labour power stolen from you, to endure \npoverty, wars, environmental degradation, and so on. It is quite \nanother thing to be convinced that there is no alternative to things \nbeing that way, that no changes but the most superficial ones are worth \nthe effort of even thinking about. That craftily critical supporter of \ncapitalism, Galbraith, taunts us with the observation that \u2018the \ncontrolling contentment and resulting belief is now that of the many, \nnot just of the few\u2019 (1993:10).\n<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\nMarx can be forgiven for not having recognised and analysed the ways in \nwhich hegemony has come to play such an important part in the sustenance\n and development of capitalism. In his day the information society was \nin its infancy. Poorly educated workers, without the vote and subject \nto a more brutal form of class and property society than we have today, \ncould more easily have felt that it was their system, not ours. A \nnumber of writers have contributed to our understanding of what hegemony\n is and how it works. I start with one of the clearest statements, \nperhaps an unlikely find in a book mainly about leisure:\n<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\nHegemony entails class domination through the participation of \nsubordinate classes. In our daily work and leisure activities we \nparticipate in creating the conditions and social relations that shape \nour lives\u2026 Hegemony varies in strength; it is never total, secure, \ncomplete but is susceptible to attack, degeneration, undermining, \ndisplacement. A practice is hegemonic to the degree that its structure \nis defined by elites, by centralized social structures, and even by the \nphysical space and objects available for the practice – relative to \nbeing controlled by its practitioners. A study of the commercialisation\n of leisure reveals how that part of our lived experience supposed to be\n free of domination is transformed by capitalist development. The \nexpropriation of the means of leisure is a prerequisite for \ncommercialization\u2026 A generation that grows up with purchased leisure may\n not develop the skills of self-entertainment (Butsch, 1990:8).\n<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\nButsch goes on to describe how most contemporary leisure practices are \nnot entirely the impositions of profit-seeking capital, nor are they \nentirely the free expression of what consumers want. They are a \ncombination of both. Ideas for new products, services and experiences \nare not simply reflections of capitalism but are also mass-mediated \nexpressions of people. Consumers participate in shaping new products \nand practices, which corporations in turn shape into profitable sales \nand supporting mass culture.\n<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\nSome years ago Gorz (1966:328) recognised the hegemonic nature of \ncapitalism and the vital role that workers play in keeping it going: \n\u2018Workers endorse the employers\u2019 power every day, by clocking in on time,\n by submitting to work which they have no hand in organising, by taking \nhome pay-packets\u2026 Modern industry\u2019s dominant tendency is no longer the \nmaximum exploitation of the workers. The dominant tendency is to \n\u2018integrate\u2019 the workers into the system.\u2019\n<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\nFor capitalism to stagger from one crisis to the next, to alternate \nbetween boom and slump, to produce extremes of wealth and poverty, but \nto provide tolerable conditions for most of the people most of the time,\n it is not necessary that everyone wholeheartedly supports the system. \nIt is better for \u2018stability\u2019 that the way things are organised and \ncontrolled is not even seen as a system, as one possibility among \nothers. The commitment of subordinates to the system is likely to take \nthe form mostly of pragmatic acquiescence rather than normative or \nideological involvement (Hill, 1990:3). However keen on the ideology of\n the profit system its beneficiaries and apologists may be, however wise\n they may appear to be in selecting for support the best of all possible\n systems, it is safer for them to rely on TINA (\u2018there is no \nalternative\u2019), as Miliband (1994:11) spells out:\n<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\nHegemony\u2026 is usually taken to mean the capacity of ruling classes to \ninstil their values into subordinate classes and to turn these values \ninto the \u2018common sense of the epoch\u2019. By now, hegemony has acquired an \nadditional meaning: it must also be taken to mean the capacity of \nruling classes to persuade subordinate classes that, whatever they may \nthink of the social order, and however much they may be alienated from \nit, there is no alternative to it. Hegemony depends not so much on \nconsent as on resignation.\n<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\nKolakowski (1978:242) carries the argument a stage further, echoing and \ndeveloping the Marxist claim that the prevailing ideas of the time are \nthose of the ruling class, formulated and disseminated as a result of \nthat class\u2019s ownership and control of the intellectual and cultural as \nwell as the physical means of production. He also outlines the \nchallenge facing workers to overcome the prevailing status-quo culture \nand to substitute a revolutionary and egalitarian culture:\n<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n\u2026 hegemony signifies the control of the intellectual life of society by \npurely cultural means. Every class tries to secure a governing position\n not only in public institutions but also in regard to the opinions, \nvalues and standards acknowledged by the bulk of society. The \nprivileged classes in their time secured a position of hegemony in the \nintellectual as well as the political sphere; they subjugated the others\n by this means, and intellectual supremacy was a precondition of \npolitical rule. The main task of the workers in modern times was to \nliberate themselves spiritually from the culture of the bourgeoisie\n<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\nBut the challenge has not been met and hegemony persists. The bourgeois\n culture extends far beyond intellectual life and politics. It \npermeates education, the family, everyday life, work and leisure. No \naspect of social structure and individual life is untouched by \ncapitalist values, though they may be resisted. If those values are \nubiquitous today we must remember that they have not always existed and \nneed not exist indefinitely into the future.\n<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n\nA culture of consumption\n<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

\nHistorians and archaeologists will one day discover that the ads of our \ntime are the richest and most faithful reflections that any society ever\n made of its entire range of activities.(Marshall McLuhan<\/em>)\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

\nThe incessant witless repetition of advertisers\u2019 moron-fodder has become\n so much a part of life that if we are not careful, we forget to be \ninsulted by it.(The Times<\/em>)\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

\nThese quotes, appearing among others on the back cover of a book by \nRobinson (1998), illustrate from different points of view the pervasive \nrole that the process of persuading us to consume performs in capitalist\n society. Advertising is part of this process, but so are the \nassociated \u2018industries\u2019 of marketing, market research, public relations,\n lobbying, think tanks, image and presentation consultancies, consumer \nadvice and protection bodies and programmes (Beder, 2000:276). Late \ncapitalism is increasingly a culture of consumption. Shop till you drop\n is a popular injunction (perhaps buy till you die is too morbid an idea\n to be successfully marketed).\n<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\nThere is profit in selling things to people who cannot really afford to \nbuy them but can be enticed, cajoled or shamed into buying them. There \nis even more profit in concentrating sales efforts on people with money \nwho can be more easily lured into buying things they don\u2019t need but can \nbe persuaded to want. Battery-powered dancing beer cans and waterproof \nbible cases are available to American consumers. In Japan you can buy a\n doll which precisely resembles your own child (you\u2019re never too young \nto become a customer).\n<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\nThe culture of consumption is one example of hegemony. It creates \nrealms of negotiation and empowerment in the consumption and \ninterpretations that sustain the legitimacy of domination. Even trends \nof protest in fashion, film, music, travel and leisure soon become \nmass-marketed for privatized consumption.\n<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\nThe importance to capitalism of our role as consumers is evident in the \nhuge amount of time, effort and money that goes into monitoring our \nbuying habits, \u2018lifestyle\u2019 choices and financial stature (Staples, \n1997:81). Apparently one consulting firm sneaks tiny cameras inside \nfrozen-food compartments in supermarkets to chart the eye movements of \nshoppers in the hope of determining better placement for high-margin \nitems (Robinson, 1998:114).\n<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\nWe are cast as accomplices in our own commercial seduction. Every time \nwe hand out information about ourselves we are feeding databases with \nmore details. Every time we buy something with a credit card we leave a\n breadcrumb on the trail of our consumer habits. Such crumbs of \ninformation are diligently saved, analysed, processed and disseminated \nby market research sparrows. Their conclusions affect the mail offers \nwe receive, the tele-marketing calls we get, what products go on our \nlocal supermarket shelves.\n<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\nThe culture of consumption depends very largely on the use of technology\n for its maintenance and development. In theory, technology is neutral \nregarding the type of society we live in. We should be as able to use \ntechnology for revolutionary purposes as for status quo purposes. But \nthe vital decisions about technology are not in neutral hands. They are\n in the hands of those who benefit most from the present arrangements.\n<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\nEarly in the twentieth century the technology of Taylorism was used to \nmake factory production more profitable. Work operations were broken \ndown, speeded up, priced more economically to the employer. Mattelart \n(1979:175) suggests that the norms of Taylorism have invaded the \neducational sphere: they preside over the tightening up of the \nideological apparatus to watch over the commercial potential of young \nminds.\n<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\nAn adequate understanding of capitalism, undertaking not merely to \nunderstand it but more importantly to surpass it, requires understanding\n the various social forces that hold it together, the complex \nintermingling and reciprocity of politics, prevailing ideology, property\n rights, the functions of money, mass media, education, and much else. \nBocock (1986:33) makes an admirable attempt to survey this vast field, \nin a passage which I locate here rather than elsewhere in the book \nbecause he concludes with the formation of the desire to consume goods \nand services, in other words the culture of consumption:\n<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\nThe workers, and others, hold the values and political ideas that they \ndo as a consequence of both trying to survive, and of attempting to \nenjoy themselves, within capitalism. These activities require money; \nthe cash nexus remains, therefore, a major means of social, economic and\n political control. The control exerted by the cash nexus is mediated \nby ideological means, for people have to come to desire the goods \noffered for sale. Such desires are not natural or inborn, and they are \nnot taken for granted by modern capitalism. The desires to consume \nvarious products have to be constructed by ideological apparatuses, \nespecially in the mass media – not only by explicit advertisements but \nmore especially through the portrayal of life-styles in stories, films, \narticles, photographs and television images. No revolution led by the \nproletariat of the Western capitalist societies is in sight on this \nview, as long as their desire to consume goods and services are being \nformed in this way.\n<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\nIt would be dangerously close to a single issue approach to a complex \nworld to believe that workers\u2019 consuming desires and habits are the \nonly, or even the main, thing standing in the way of their joining a \nrevolution to abolish capitalism and replace it with a system more \nworthy of their potential development. However, there is much evidence \nthat capitalism does lead us to depend on consuming for our happiness \nand our sense of self (\u2018I consume, therefore I am\u2019).\n<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\nThere is nothing wrong with seeking to satisfy your own authentic needs,\n the needs of others and of the community and society in which you live.\n But there is something seriously wrong with a society that is based so\n firmly on commercial relationships and fosters a culture of consumption\n in which the basic needs of much of the world\u2019s population remain \nunmet. Even under the pressures of capitalism, we are not just buyers \nand sellers, exploited and exploiters. Acts of giving and taking, \nsharing, co-operating, going out of one\u2019s way to help others, are not \nusually prominent when \u2018human nature\u2019 is discussed. But such acts are \nthere to be maximised in a new society where consumerism will be a thing\n of the past.\n<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n\n\n\n

Back to the Society and Culture index<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This is a chapter from ‘Stop Supporting Capitalism – Start Building Socialism’ by Stan Parker, published by Bridge Books (2002). Published by agreement with the author. Capitalism cannot live by bread alone – if \u2018bread\u2019 is a metaphor for the whole range of goods and services produced and sold on the market. The profit system…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2087,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"magazine_newspaper_sidebar_layout":"","footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-1044","page","type-page","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.worldsocialism.org\/wsm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/1044","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.worldsocialism.org\/wsm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.worldsocialism.org\/wsm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.worldsocialism.org\/wsm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.worldsocialism.org\/wsm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1044"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.worldsocialism.org\/wsm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/1044\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2686,"href":"https:\/\/www.worldsocialism.org\/wsm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/1044\/revisions\/2686"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.worldsocialism.org\/wsm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2087"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.worldsocialism.org\/wsm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1044"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}