Riding my bike the other day, I realized that sometimes it is hard to delineate what is important from the mediocre. At other times, like when an obnoxious driver throws a lit cigarette in your face for riding in his lane, it is really easy to figure out. My friendly driving buddy, maybe you had a bad day (or possibly bad life) at work, and indeed you did want to get home in the most empowering fashion as possible. And here's this stupid cyclist who is taking a lane for itself. Even though the lane beside you was entirely free, I can understand the frustration which led to an act constituting assault, and it in turn caused me to respond in a less than civil manner. A victim script which undermines the moral position of the victim. A non-stop and self-affirming fuck you, and so we both drop into the abyss together. Isn't judgement fun?
What I mean by this rather convoluted opening is to suggest that even little things can have a significant depth of political importance. With the threat of election now past, once again the overt process of acting political has come and gone from popular media attention. We as Canadians almost had to “get political” with a possible June election, and accordingly we were told by the news media to “pay attention”. A few questions were raised: are the Liberals a bunch of corrupt opportunists? will the Conservative party “save” the economy while killing social programs for those who are less fortunate? will the Bloc successfully fracture the country? Despite the importance of debating such themes, it is crucial to note that all of those directly involved in the political process are actors, playing scripts which they believe will influence public opinion. Consequently, the central debate within the party spectrum is continually swayed from a debate on the consequences of public institutions themselves to the personalities of the actors.
You can buy politics in pretty much the same way you do any other piece of furniture in your life: that which seems to be most excitingly dynamic and innocuously conforming at the same time. But maybe that's precisely my point, for the media, as a phenomenon largely dictated by the whims of the market, is itself a politicized form of what was once “the political”. News agencies alter their coverage to accommodate viewership. Politicians change their campaigns in order to elicit certain viewer responses, much in the same way that car commercials do. The viewer is invoked as the actor-in-charge in either situation. “Look how tough and in control I am” screams Ford to its viewers as an SUV charges over a hill. Similarly, politicians invoke voters as “rational” and in control of their destiny when they vote for their party. The car is the country when I -- the viewer -- make things happen. That ghost-self in front of me which I buy as my identity is entirely and always advertising a particular market position.
This process reminds me that everyday people spend billions of dollars on little scripts used daily. It works like this: you might consider yourself a “professional”, and thus you purchase the lifestyle accouterments that accord with that power: PDA, laptop, luxury vehicle, clothes that are expensive but not overtly fashionable. You are supposed to believe in certain things, like free enterprise and rational humanism. Likewise with the “working class”: minivan or SUV, satellite dish, big-screen tv. That you as a relatively poor person could afford to own televisions and cars and such tends to reinforce a belief in things like free enterprise and rational humanism. It is quite interesting to note that class distinctions are not as rigidly maintained to the degree they were in the first half of the 20th century, however. Rich and middle-income people alike will find themselves in similar malls, consuming similar media culture, and desiring relatively similar things.
The difference between what we used to call “the classes” is no longer entirely material, in so much as a 20" tv for $200 and a 50" plasma for $7500 were each most likely manufactured in similar facilities with the same rates of pay for their employees. Purchasing either the low or the high end precipitates the same result: the company profits and thus maintains its production and market ideologies.
So where does this leave what we used to call the political?
What if you don’t agree with the specific production or market ideology of a company? Let’s say that you disagree with the abuse of the environment as represented by industrialized farming. In a more or less traditional sense of politics, you’ll try to support political parties which seem environmentally friendly. While this may have the desired effect of slightly limiting the company’s production policy, it is unlikely to bear fruit in pragmatic terms. Even the most progressive governments on the planet cannot effectively curtail the business interests of corporations. In fact, some of the largest corporations have monetary resources which exceed many governments, and thus they maintain their freedom to realize their business on terms which may prove against the wishes of a particular citizenry. With this in mind, let me bring up the somewhat sobering fact that Monsanto and its subsidiaries will likely remain more powerful than the Democrats, the Liberals, the NDP, the Greens, or whoever else.
Voting in this context will not perform its intended function, namely the representation of the will of the people to those who guide the country. As much as those of us on the left wish to berate market economics, financial data is the will of the people made into a practical representation. If company X brings a product to market by exploiting its employees, there will be no change to the real political situation of those employees until the company no longer makes money with that product. Despite the current data regarding health and environmental damage, people continue to eat garbage food because they like the “modern” lifestyle that quick food represents.
In classical terms -- Cicero, Machiavelli, etc -- the key to maintaining power is to convince the ruled subjects that what is being done is not only necessary and beneficial, but also inevitable. If such is the case with liberal capitalism, than is it not most fitting that the more or less empty gesture of voting would be the sole overt political contribution from the vast majority of the population. In this manner, policies which are detrimental to the greater good can be passed without fear of resistence, and a near immunity to open insurrection. Is this why every day I see more people drinking coffee while conversing than ever participating in what we typically call politics or activism?
One cool as shit thing that is universal in the market is incapacitance. See, if any solution were to truly work, it would obliterate its reproduceability and thus its long-term profitability. That's the bottom line for corporations: will you as consumer be a revenue stream for us not once, but repeatedly. Wonder why, for example, that DVD player stopped working or bits of your car started falling off after only a few years? Maybe a more Frankenstein-like image might evoke itself when you start to question why much of the food that we eat is itself becoming a purposefully broken technology. To make a short story long, what might planned obsolescence have to say about our individual sense of identity and power? Are we doomed to be Broken Subjects fixed by Market Solutions™?
And so we sit and watch tv and wait until the voting happens to act out what we think is our political duty. There's little time to think about the political consequences of little daily rituals, like buying a coffee or chosing to yell at some kid whose method of transportation differs from your own (<--- action="" aggregate="" all="" also="" and="" another="" br="" but="" buy="" call="" consequence="" day="" do="" every="" everything="" generally.="" in="" is="" it="" manner="" of="" one="" political="" politics="" relate="" see="" sell="" that="" the="" to="" we="" which="" zeitgeist="">
As a side note, I won’t assume a link between the guy who yelled at me to get off the road and the Conservative Party sticker on his bumper.
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