Death of Democracy - Rajan Gurukkal

Death of Democracy

An Inevitable Possibility under Capitalism

Rajan Gurukkal (rgurukkal@gmail.com) is a historian and social scientist, and is vice chairman of the Kerala State Higher Education Council.

What happens to democracy when capitalism becomes global? Capitalist expansion and democratisation are popularly represented by the magical term “development.” However, the unbridled development
of capitalism is invariably based on the over-exploitation of natural resources, and the consequent impoverishment of tribal people, expansion of the middle class and transformation of the nation into a crony capitalist state. The latest phase of capitalism, namely techno-capitalism—with its corporate system of organisation and highly centralised top-heavy administration, or “corporatocracy”—signifies the measured death of democracy.

Democracy has always been considered a goal which is a long way off, ever since the onset of differentiated economy and stratified society. Throughout history, we tookoligarchy for democracy and always believed that bourgeois democracy could be transformed into real democracy through constitutional reforms. One liberal political scientist even contemplated the globalisation of Western liberal democracy and the subsequent “end of history”¹ as imminent (Fukuyama 1992). Expectedly, a total rebuttal of the end of history thesis came, with reference to the reawakening of history under the revolutionary force of the people (Badiou 2012). Hope for a people’s resurgence in the form of survival struggles does make sense, and it may be reasonable to
dream of the European lower middle class resuscitating their revolutionary democratic values and passions of 1789 or 1848. However, few expect the North American elites to endorse a renewed call for liberty and equality, as in 1776.

Capitalism and Democracy

Capitalism denotes the means, forces and relations of production, facilitating transformation of money into capital, through industrial production and profit-maximising exchange. Capitalist development means the enhanced accumulation of capital (Marx 1867). Its juridico–political devices were manifested in the post-feudal polities of constitutional monarchy and patriarchy. Colonisation of the new world was an early landmark of capitalist development. It was after the American war of independence in 1776 and the birth of the United States (US), that thepatriarchal juridico–political system was transformed into bourgeois democracy. Since then, capitalist development has depended upon the democratic state, run by the bourgeoisie. The rise of a new Europe following the French Revolution of 1789 tended to democratise beyond the middle class, but the middle-class alliance with the bourgeoisie sabotaged this process, substituting it with an absolutist state under Napoleon Bonaparte. Capitalism developed through competitive colonisation, often turning state power into imperialism, by waging wars globally.Anti-colonial struggles and the constitution of liberal democratic nation states as well as dictatorships emerged in Asia, where capitalism developed in alliance with both.

Nevertheless, capitalists were constrained to fight dictatorships for economic reasons, while they tried to retain bourgeois democracy, also called liberal democracy—guaranteeing in its rhetoric, the freedom of the press and speech, and the right of habeas corpus—for ensuring a laissez-faire state. Both,people’s democracy and the free market, are part of the rhetoric of capitalism, for its inexorably hidden “real” has never been anything short of oligarchy and monopoly. Capitalistsinstigated anti-communist bourgeois democratic struggles, promoted liberal democratic states, and put up a sustainedresistance against communism. However, communist revolutions gave birth to socialist dictatorships in Russia first, and subsequently, in China, where capitalism was yet to develop. In due course, capitalism developed even in communist countries by transforming socialism into state capitalism. In spite of the contrasts between state capitalism and transnational capitalism, capitalism has continued its inevitable development into global capitalism. Under it, perhaps the only relatively appreciable democratic state since the world wars might be the Nordic model in the Scandinavian countries. However, their social democracy based on privatised Keynesianism has proven
unsustainable, demanding enhanced collectiveresponsibility (Crouch 2009; Castells et al 2017).²

The fate of democracy under capitalist development has never been a topic of serious debate, despite the fact that Karl Marx’s theory of capitalism, as applied by Vladimir Ilich Lenin (1999) to state power, had brought about the thesis of imperialism as the highest stage of capitalism.³Rosa Luxemburg found imperialism to be a theoretical inevitability in the process of development of the capitalist mode of production, through global-level capital export and extension of accumulation under monopoly capital (Luxemburg 1913; Wolfe 2001). Under capitalism, the life of democracy is positioned as “being-toward-death,” in reference to what Martin Heidegger said about human death: an inevitable and imminent possibility, which everybody ignores.

Development Rhetoric

According to Marx’s theory, development means capitalistdevelopment. However, in popular parlance the term “development” is taken to mean all that people aspire for themselves. Its usage cleverly and successfully conceals its real meaning: capitalist growth with underlying implications of “colonialism” and “imperialism.” Another related popular term, “globalisation,” similarly hushes up its actual meaning of capitalistglobalisation, which implies “neo-colonialism” and “neo-imperialism.” Despite the recurrence of recessions, capitalismexpanded through fresh strategies of accumulation, which were able to acquire social legitimacy under the ideological veil of “development.” Development is, therefore, a mischievous term, but one of universal acclaim for something ideal. It means the expansion of capital-, technology-,energy-, and chemical-intensive industrialproduction for globalconsumption, in order to achieve maximisation of profit, high rates of capital accumulation, a current account balance of payment surplus, the lowest capital–output ratio, and the highest per capita consumption rate; are allattributes ofdevelopment (Ruccio 2011). Almost all nations in thenorthern hemisphere are distinguished with these attributes. They jointly constitute the capitalist economic structure thatsubsumes and dominates the economic relations andfunctions of the world.

Broadly speaking, theories of development can be divided into two mutually antagonistic categories, the liberal and the radical. Liberal theories of development are based on thenotions of neo-classical economics, while radical theories are based on the critical political economy and development anthropology. Theories under the first category constitute the core of modern economics, which provides capitalism with its foundational knowledge, allowing for the articulation of neocolonial, neo-liberal and neo-imperialist ideas within the “sugar-coated” rhetoric of development. Some of these are indeed liberal theories—based on pragmatic criticism and upholding democratic values and social ethics—but which function largely as eddies in the capitalist current. Radical theories of development are founded on Marxist epistemology, but with varying levels of praxis intervention, ranging from armed revolution (Marxist–Leninist) and social–democratic collective operation (neo-Marxist), to civil society reformist initiatives. Of all the theories of development justifying the capitalist agenda,Walt Whitman Rostow’s (1960) formulation ranks the foremost. It conceives development in terms of five stages, and accordingly classifies economies as traditional, underdeveloped, developing, developed, or post-industrial. It wasRostow’s work that popularised the term development.

Theoretical Engagements

Several scholars have highlighted the cultural strategies of capitalist expansion, camouflaging imperialist ways of capitalist exploitation and legitimising unequal power relations (Adorno 1991). There is an impressive body of literature by neo-Marxists like Louis Althusser, Etienne Balibar, Fernand Braudel, André Gunder Frank, Immanuel Wallerstein, Walter Rodney, Samir Amin and others, analysing relations of diplomacy, trade agreements, development treaties and technology transfers, which expose the presence of imperialist state power behind the so-called democratic governance of capitalist countries. Their reinterpretations of hardcore Marxist political economy have brought to bear the incompatibility between democracy and capitalism, by demonstrating how capitalist states created and sustained the underdeveloped world (Wallerstein 1976; Frank 1971, 1979; Rodney 1983; Amin 1990, 1997). Neo-Marxists or post-Marxists like Ernesto Laclau, Chantal Mouffe,Slavoj Žižek, Antonio Negri, Michael Hardt, Jean-Luc Nancy, Partha Chatterjee and others, discuss the sad plight of postcolonial democracy against the background of the rising global capitalist neo-imperialism. Their studies provide insights into the politics of caste and ethnicity in postcolonial democracies with crony states, which are at odds with the nation state as well as capitalist development.⁴ To Partha Chatterjee (1993; 2011), the politics of ethnicity in India, although apparently an essentialist entity, is not a contrast to national democracy. Neo-marxist theoreticians do not believe that democraticnationalist essentialism is opposed to democratic ethnic essentialism, because the essentialism of both is susceptible to slip into authoritarianism and subsequently, fascism (a natural manifestation in advanced capitalist development). This isevident in India where caste and ethnic politics, althoughostensibly championing the subaltern causes, are susceptible to be trapped by the dominant communal essentialism.

Antonio Negri and Hardt (2000) argue that imperialism under advanced capitalism is not manifesting within the nation state as one would expect. Global capitalism has been fast bypassing and undermining the state system. A new global imperialism—run by international institutions like the International Monetary Fund (IMF), World Bank, and the World TradeOrganization (WTO)—has already outdated state-driven imperialism. Ever since the open withdrawal of the state from most sectors of people’s welfare, there has been a steady intensification of privatisation of public assets, impairing nationaleconomic sovereignty. What some heads of state in the grown-up capitalist countries exhibit is not national imperialism per se, but a mere reflection of the capitalist global power.

Development Anthropology

Development anthropology, an offshoot of neo-Marxist theory of capitalist development, focuses primarily on the micro-level processes under the influence of postmodern and post-structural perspectives. They owe their pattern of thinking to Michel Foucault (1972) and Jean-François Lyotard (1979). It isFoucault’s discourse analysis—which helps understand how a text of the power–knowledge combine works on its subjects—upon which development anthropologists have depended for their interpretations. According to Foucault, a discourse transforms people into its subjects and acts as the de facto influence on their minds and bodies. Postmodern anthropologists perceive capitalist development as a discourse that fundamentally transforms the mindset of people, and makes them subjects, uncritically accepting the meanings, measures and truth claims rendered plausible by the “development discourse.”

Development anthropologists like James Ferguson andArturo Escobar have criticised the neoclassical and neo-liberal perception of development as an extension of Rostow’s theory (Ferguson 1990, 2006; Escobar 1984, 2011). Applying Foucault’s concept, they conceive development as an epochal discourse that has transformed most people into its subjects through production and dissemination of necessary knowledge, that is, new meanings, ideas, relations and processes of development as truth. This construction of knowledge, technically calledobjectification, results in the creation of the appropriate mentality for accepting new truths about the subjects themselves. Accordingly, nations with discursively engendered development subjects, uncritically accept their status exactly as construed by the development discourse. Since World War II, the criteria of the development discourse, which included several extra-economic factors like food habits, architecture of dwellings, costumes and other cultural practices made them uncritically accept their status as poor countries (Rahnema 1988; Maxwell 2003). As a result, many consider themselves underdeveloped, and hence at the mercy of the developed countries for evolving strategies of development. These countries, after signing various treaties and agreements with developed countries, have been awaiting development. A variety of neocolonial/neo-imperialistic strategies in the form of development treaties for technology transfer, financial support, soft loans and big debts for industrial growth and export maximisation, have trapped the underdeveloped and developing nations.

A recent estimate of Global Financial Integrity (GFI) and the Centre for Applied Research at the Norwegian School of Economics (2015) shows that the net drain from the global South since 1980 adds up to $16.3 trillion. In fact, of this net outflow, since 1980, developing countries have transferred $4.2 trillion to the developed countries by way of interest payments on debt (Hickel 2017; World Bank and International Debt Statistics nd). This has been the consequence of the high debt service trap, systematically made more inescapable by the developed countries using strategies of trade reforms, technological sophistication, free imports, reduction of import tariffs, privatisation, free capital flow, full convertibility of national currency and so on, all encouraged as “solutions” to the crisis in the underdeveloped world.

Underdeveloped and developing nations are in debt traps, and the myriad pressures that the market-friendly cultureexerts often leads to increasing suicide rates. Over five lakh farmers are reported to have committed suicide during the five years of liberalisation and structural adjustment since 1995 (Shiva and Jalees 2009). There is a commendable body of literature on suicide mortality illustrating the plight of indebted farmers and weavers of India in the wake of the unpredictable market conditions. Articles published in this journal itself are many. Financial globalisation—that facilitated the flight of American and European capital to developing countries through the liberalisation of the capital market—has led to a series of effects such as privatisation, free trade, foreign investment growth, hegemony of global organisations, mounting debt,intensifying competition, strengthening of new market pressures, heightening of political, cultural, social and economic insecurity, etc. Also, the often sudden and arbitrary withdrawal of foreign capital investment pushes the host nation into trouble. Decline of the public sphere is another consequentdisaster (Habermas 1989).

It is now being increasingly recognised that development, as demonstrated by the capitalist economy, will never be universalised, because of the growing theoretical awareness of its exploitative relationship of imbalance, which has been inevitably structured by the dominance of the developed countries. Countries subject to this exploitation are slowly coming to terms with the reality that their “development” through transnational capital aids and technology transfer was mere myth and propaganda (Rahnema 1988).

Hardly a scheme for developing the underdeveloped, it was rather a strategy for sustaining the development of the developed through a variety of methods, enabling the transformation of national economies into structures of freewheeling capitalism. Nevertheless, many liberalists still believe in Kuznets’ curve and hope for the process of “trickle down” to set in soon (Kuznets 1955; Piketty 2014). They continue to view population growth, inequality, urbanisation, agricultural transformation, education, health, unemployment, etc, in their own merits, and not merely as appendages to an underlying growth model. Development anthropologists preferred to go further by focusing on the marginalised as victims of development. They seek to discuss how the discourse works in everyday development situations and orders social relationships within marginalised local communities (Grillo and Stirrat 1997).

With the growing indifference of the state to problems of drinking water, food, healthcare, education, and public distribution, people have been forced to become market dependent. Corporate capital entered unbridled, into areas of naturalresources and ecosystems of biodiversity, causing dispossession of local people’s age-old subsistence strategies, disruption of culture and local wisdom, and devastation of habitat(Hobsbawm 2007). With agricultural seeds now being made into a patented commodity, farmers are unable to exchange them anymore, while expensive fertilisers have made agriculture costly. Unpredictable markets on occasions of good harvest and frequent crop failures due to unsuitable climatic conditions have made the life of farmers extremely miserable. Farmers’ suicide mortality is too stale a topic of analysis for socialscientists to be inquisitive about, and an issue least topical for politicians to be perturbed. Inequality has become unprecedentedly glaring with the proliferation of billionaires on one side and the phenomenal rise of the impoverished on the other (Piketty 2014). Billionaires come up not only through the software industry, but also through trade in drinking water, a commodity of high-profit trade for corporate houses. Many are deprived of access to drinking water, which has become acontested natural resource almost everywhere. The loss ofnational aid towards food and fuel has made the life of the poor incredibly miserable and they are increasingly being pushed into a struggle for survival.

Nevertheless, the process of capital growth at the cost ofequity is heading for a cul-de-sac. These warnings of the limits to capital growth are by way of ecological non-sustainability, environmental degradation, inescapable entropy and the inevitable collapse of the capitalist system (Rifkin and Howard 1980; Meadows et al 1972; 1993, 2004).

Limits to Growth

Development involving the squandering of natural resources denotes a process of economic domination, which deprives common people of their means of subsistence. Its technology has acquired free access to natural resources, initiating their over-exploitation at an unprecedented intensity. It is a process of shifting control over natural resources from the local power structure to the supralocal, national and international.Nationalisation of natural resources has divested the local community of its livelihood rights over them, and similarlyinternationalisation divests the nation of its sovereign control. World Bank projects of eco-restoration are examples of thisdivestment. Through their funding for securing the livelihoods of forest dwellers, they often deprive the people of their livelihood rights. International financial control of natural resources in the name of biodiversity conservation, ecosystem management or wildlife preservation has implications of deprivation of sovereign power of the nation over its natural wealth. To work for an alternative domain of thinking, which is capable of critiquing and replacing modern development economics, is a decolonising project. Sustainable development discussed widely is not altogether different from the dominant development, for it has not led any developed country to bring down its gross domestic product (GDP). Hence the elements of alternative development are being articulated through a countercultural movement and survival struggles led by the marginalised millions..

This disastrous expansion, covered by the veil of “development”—an enchanting word with wide social consensus—often involves deforestation, denial of forest rights, destruction of habitats, deprivation of livelihood, disruption of culture, contamination of the drinking water sources, acquisition ofrural farm lands, etc. Naturally, the tribal people and poor peasants facing such acute crises have no alternative other than launching unending struggles for survival. Survival is the central objective across the plurality of these struggles that manifest in multiple forms ranging from organised militancy of the Marxist–Leninist revolutionaries, struggles led by environmental activists, joint movements for people’s rights, and spontaneous protest outbreaks by the victims of development. Indeed, the unprompted mass survival struggles generallyacquire the solidarity of the larger society thanks to the advocacy by middle class intellectuals as well as those politiciansrepresenting social concerns.

Development Decentralisation

Several countries in Asia and sub-Saharan Africa introduced decentralisation through constitutional reforms under the World Bank agenda of local-level development. Indian states were encouraged to carry out decentralisation for development through local self-governance. The social misconception of the word development led many people to misunderstand theactual meaning of decentralisation. They took it to meandemocratisation at the grass roots, without knowing that grass-roots democracy is hardly attainable through constitutionally-ordained reforms, which seek only to quicken development administration.

What could, at best, be feasible through constitutionalreforms is administrative decentralisation, without upsetting the local social power relations as exemplified by the People’s Plan initiatives (Isaac 2001; Tharakan and Rawal 2001). Constitutionally engendered decentralisation is not democratisation, for it hardly means anything more than a localisation of class governance, based on the status quo. It is well known that democratisation brings about no social change in the structural sense, so long as it affects no institutional development in local administration that would upset the local power structure (Esman and Uphoff 1984). The state of affairs in several countries shows that the development of institutions—which combine the public, private and membership sector—aiming towards the empowerment of the local poor through better access to power and resources, is at a low ebb. Actually,democratisation should lead to the development of local institutions and organisations, limiting and controlling state actions and private forces (Gran 1983). However, their structural transformative role will be minimal, unless alternative civil organisations and institutions emanate from the grass roots.

In India, democratisation has been occurring through state-induced administrative reform. It is no accident, therefore, that there is no indication of institutional development at the grass roots to ensure better access of the weaker sections tolocal resources and power. The existing level, extent and basis of participation relates to the ongoing national democratic system and its pro-middle class incentives as determined by the power relations of the local society, which are rooted in the dominant class–caste–community–religion nexus. In fact, this precludes institutional development with enough potential to liberate the locality from exploitative macrostructures ofbureaucracy and capitalist markets. It is inevitable to search for political ways and means to transcend this theoretical stalemate. Only praxis strategies of politicisation and empowerment of the marginalised, facilitating people’s struggle against structural contradictions in local power relations, would lead to grass-roots democracy (Gurukkal 2001).

Various factors impede the politicisation and empowerment of the marginalised and the poor. Deprived of critical thought, they remain largely apolitical and susceptible to ideological coercion by the dominant. Caught up in culturally contingent identity traps of ethnicity, caste and religion, many of them are least amenable to politicisation. Therefore, in reality, it is centralised governance structured by the dominance of the upper class, that we call democracy today. The dominated and exploited poor are unaware of the contrast between the reigning democracy and grass-roots democracy. Theoretically, the state machinery (even the truly leftist), being ultimately an upper-class instrument, can hardly empower the downtrodden. Presuming otherwise, is as good as expecting the state to participate in the class war of the poor. Yet, many people still believe that liberal democracy can resolve the problem of class contradiction through legislation.

Crony Capitalist States

Today’s nation states the world over, are largely undemocratic, of course, to varying degrees, while not altogether totalitarian in each case. They are made up of several orders orhierarchies around uneven economies, but are almost entirely structured by the dominance of relations and functions under capitalism, irrespective of the distance between the region and the metropolis (Resnick and Wolff 1981; McDermott 1991). More or less relieved from pre-capitalist socialencumbrances and placed at the mercy of the market with the freedom to buy and sell, the people are now integrated into the hierarchies of bureaucracy attached to state,semi-state and private enterprise. Every enterprise is bureaucratic and hierarchical. This is the unilinear global structure that recurs in any nation state, although with numerousculturallycontingent specificities. With its various organs representing diverse groups, relations and interests insociety, the state seemingly plays the central role of overall coordination, but in effect, only as desired by the middle class, whichconstitutes the government, and as determined bycapitalists, whomaintain ultimate control (Vincent 1987: 34–39;Green 1988: 62–68).

Ever since the open withdrawal of the state from most sectors of people’s welfare, there has been a steady intensification of the privatisation of public assets. This process has been pushing developing nations like India into a solvency crisis, where public sector disinvestment is forging ahead under the pretext of reform, transferring national resources into the hands of a minority. Integrated to the process of decentralisation, local public assets are being privatised in alignment with the national policy. Further, all kinds of anti-social concepts such as “outsourcing,” “downsizing the public sector,” “multiple stakeholders approach,” non-governmental organisations, voluntary agencies, etc, have become sophisticated expressions, exciting no repulsion in the minds of the general public. In countries like India where capitalism grows unbridled, the national political power, although democratically engendered, remains ultimately only a tool in the hands of corporate houses. A crony capitalist state, it allows corporate houses to loot the public and the state revenue by contracting services, for“better efficiency.”

“Development,” the most misleading term, has conditioned us to accept any “anti-people” scheme as natural and inevitable. It is now not even necessary for the state to hide its instrumental role in the conversion of people’s common property into private assets. Today, the state is openly an agency determined to subsidise capitalism by all means and facilitate its expansion, even at the cost of the livelihoods of the poor (Gurukkal 2012). In the process, state power is itself privatised in the form of the sale of public credits or bidding for the job of recovering government loans, or even tasks of crime investigation. For instance, there are private agencies working as assets reconstruction companies and crime investigation groups in India, to which the state outsources its monopolistic functions of recovering loans and investigating crime. This amounts to privatisation of certain executive and juridical powers of the state.⁵ Common justifications of the state measures for privatisation of its functions are the lack of concern of the beneficiary public, irresponsibility of public servants, incapability of public sector institutions, bureaucratic inefficiency, bribery and other forms of corruption. All this allows the capitalist minority to loot public revenue in connivance with the state, under the pretext of one development reform or the other. This phase is called crony capitalism, for which there are many instances in India.

The establishment of special economic zones (SEZs) is the most widespread instance of crony capitalism behind the veil ofnational economic development measures. SEZs are a majorinstitutional intervention which subsidise capitalism, and which involve a very heavy loss of national revenue. Various other illegal methods of parting with huge shares of public wealth in favour of monopoly capitalists compound crony capitalism. Despite heavy revenue losses, they enjoy a private space of sovereign control too, a paradox of sovereign power within sovereignty. SEZs thus embody crony capitalism of the worst kind. Another instance is the outsourcing of bank loan recovery to asset reconstruction companies (ARCs). All revenue related transactions within the crony capitalist state are executed at the apex level in secrecy and whatever matter thereof is made public, is invariably couched in the catchy rhetoric of development. In this manner fascism penetrates into bourgeois democracy, by constraining bureaucrats of the crony state, to practise functional autocracy at the expense ofdemocratic procedures.

Latest Phase of Capitalism

The latest phase of capitalism, academically termed technocapitalism and popularly known as the “knowledge economy,” depends on the commoditisation of technology and science as the main source of capital accumulation. It has been presented as a new version of capitalism (Feenberg 1991; Perelman 2004; Suarez-Villa 2009, 2012).⁶ The production and exchange of new knowledge as the most high-valuecommodity is its main industry. In the process, the new knowledge is alienated from its actual producers, as in the case of any other commodity. Their creativity or innovativeness is commoditised and turned into patents and intellectual property rights (IPRs), which constitute the industry’s precious intangible asset. Profit-maximising transactions of patents and IPRs have made marketable knowledge both a commodity and capital today. It has given rise to a new type of “commodity fetishism” centred on knowledge, as an extension of what Marx originally theorised long ago (Marx 1867).⁷ Science is constrained to technology, as it is essential for the production of innovative knowledge, capable of securingpatents and IPRs of enormous profit potential in the field of exchange. Today, the huge transactional value that innovative knowledge and related properties generates is almost four-fifth of the total global returns (Suarez-Villa 2012).

Techno-capitalist enterprises are organised into the corporate model, a new form of organisation of the most sophisticated techno-militaristic set-up of monopolistic control over the market (McDermott 1991; Suarez-Villa 2012). With an aim towards the production of innovative knowledge, corporate houses have built huge research establishments the world over, in multiple science–technology hybrid fields of knowledge.⁸ In these fields, thousands of young experts in theoretical research and micro-engineering are employed by corporate research establishments (Suarez-Villa 2012), whichfunction as powerful techno-military complexes of electronic sophistication. Globally, they have adopted adequate juridical measures for appropriating the creativity of the brilliant minds at their disposal, enhancing the brain-drain in such countries (Suarez-Villa 2012).

There is no democracy in the structure and function of the techno-capitalist enterprises. Forming corporate houses, they have evolved a new form of techno-military industrial organisation based on principles of oligarchy and monopoly. Corporate techno-military imperialism uproots democracy through a variety of sophisticated ways. For instance, by paving the way for the rise of billionaires through the software trade, or through the provision of unbelievably high salaries for experts in certain fields, a group of highly paid transnational bureaucrats—the principal actors in the system—have penetrated into theextant democratic state systems all over the world. They reconstitute the state into a corporatocracy, a government of, for and by corporations, a new type of governance that enmeshes and destroys democracy.

Attempts at Legislating Autocracy

The impairment of democracy, an inevitable consequence of capitalist development, has been progressing in India for the last two decades, and is slowly turning the democratic state into a functional autocracy under corporatocracy. Corporate houses create state power, which efficiently mobilises people’s consent for functional autocracy. This process is made easier by uncritical masses, moved by sentiments of divisiveness, rooted in caste and communalism, which degenerate nationalism into false consciousness. A crony capitalist state, with its economic sovereignty highly impaired, will automatically seek to counterbalance itself with overtly self-aggrandising political sovereignty. Systematic and steady attempts at passinglegislations against democracy have been taking place in the country since the 1990s (Gurukkal 2017). Legislative measures of liberalisation, structural adjustments, public sector disinvestment and commercialisation of services under the pressure of the IMF, World Bank and WTO following the nation’s signing of the General Agreement on Trade and Tariff (GATT), are examples. The process acquired an added aggressiveness in the service sector after the nation’s surrender to the WTO by signing the General Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS) on 1 January 1995.

In education, health and environment, the state, underjuridical obligation began to be enthusiastic about legislating anti-democratic ideas, institutions and practices. GATS required India to adopt legislative reforms, apparently for the country to gain from trade in services, but actually, to benefit thedeveloped world. Accordingly, several reform bills, as part of neo-liberal initiatives for “improving” the country’s highereducation sector, have been proposed, and the Private Universities(Establishment and Regulation) Act, 1995 was the first to get legislated among them. The Foreign Education Institutions (Regulation of Entry and Operations) Bill, 2010, Prevention of Malpractices Bill and the Educational Tribunals Bill, 2010,National Accreditation Regulatory Authority for HigherEducation Institutions Bill, 2010, and Higher Education andResearch (HE&R) Bill, 2011 are other examples. All these bills have been pending legislation due to controversies over their constitutional validity.

Another example of an attempt to legislate centralisation in the higher education sector was the move to replace theUniversity Grants Commission (UGC) along with other national regulatory councils with a single authority. It was the National Knowledge Commission that recommended a special legislation for establishing an Independent Regulatory Authority for Higher Education (IRAHE) to set standards and determineeligibility criteria for new institutions. Thus, the NationalCommission for Higher Education and Research (NCHER) Bill, 2011 subsuming all democratic regulatory bodies in highereducation—the UGC, the All India Council for TechnicalEducation (AICTE), the National Council for Teacher Education (NCTE) and the Distance Education Council (DEC)—took shape. Due to nationwide opposition of its undemocraticnature, the government withdrew the bill on 24 September 2014. Ever since the withdrawal of the bill, there have beenefforts to reintroduce the bill for a national authority of higher education. The latest incarnation is the draft legislation for the Higher Education Commission of India (HECI), prepared as advised by NITI Aayog. The commission will be the solenational authority in the place of the existing democratic regulators such as the UGC and otherstatutory councils.

With a view to enabling hassle-free acquisition of land for the Make in India project, amendments to the Right to Fair Compensation and Transparency in Land Acquisition, Rehabilitation and Resettlement Act, 2013 were proposed in favour of the corporate houses. A de facto solution was sought by appointing a high power committee on environment in 2014. The bureaucratic committee,innocent of ecology and environmental sciences, proposedvirtual nullification of all foundational acts of social and environmental justice viz, Indian Forest Act, 1927; Indian Wildlife (Protection) Act, 1972; Water (Prevention and Control of Pollution) Act, 1974; Forest (Conservation) Act, 1980; Air (Prevention and Control of Pollution) Act, 1981; and Environment (Protection) Act, 1986 (Subramanian 2014). It alsorecommended the constitution of two bureaucratic bodies for environmental management—the National Environment ManagementAuthority (NEMA) and State EnvironmentManagement Authority (SEMA)—sidelining departments of academic expertise. Fortunately, both the houses of Parliament prevented the legislation of this anti-democratic document. However, through the Ecologically Sensitive Areas (ESA) Notification (Reference no 400/WG/2015) on 4 September 2015, thegovernment initiated steps to realise the avowed purpose through a series of amendments to the various acts concerned. This too, has been stalled due to wide public criticism. These are well-known examples of the state’s repeated attempts at legislating autocracy and there could be several others that have not been made public yet.

Conclusions

Marxist theoretical perspectives of capitalist developmentinform that imperialism is the juridico-political outcome ofadvanced capitalism. As capitalism acquires higher dimensions of development, democracy becomes increasinglyimplausible. It is the political economy of capitalist development, and not the idiosyncrasies of individual politicalleaders, that turn the state towards fascism. It is unlikely that the state—already crony capitalist in its structure and function—faces ethical pressure to combine economic growth with social and environmental justice. Whatever hope the magical word “development” sustains in people’s minds, it essentially means capitalist expansion, through over-exploitation of natural resources with the inevitable consequences of marginalisation of tribal peoples, uncontrolled growth of inequalities, transformation of the nation into a cronycapitalist state, and proliferation of billionaires. Among crony capitalist enterprises, SEZs exemplify the most undemocratic of all. They symbolise the capitalists’ de facto control over the country’s economic sovereignty. Corporate houses try to restructure the government by forcing it to be functionally autocratic through bureaucracy, and bylegislating centralisation to substitute democratic procedures. All this puts the state in perfectalignment with the growing global techno-militaristic neo-imperialism andreaffirms the death ofdemocracy; an inevitable possibility under capitalism

subliminal-advertising

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A look at Subliminal Advertising – Are you watching closely?

Subliminal Advertising is something that always draws attention. But, what is it?

‘Subliminal’ – is quite a mouthful isn’t it? Well, former president George W Bush definitely thought so, calling it “Subliminable”.  But, what is subliminal Advertising? It is something that is perceived by the viewer or listener; affecting her mind without her being aware of it. It is something that is inaudible to the conscious mind but is yet perceived by the unconscious mind.

Many psychologists believe that our day-to-day actions are sometimes governed by our unconscious and subconscious selves. It has been suggested that advertisers use subliminal messages to persuade us to purchase the products they are trying to sell.

ORIGINS:

Subliminal messages were made popular in the book “The Hidden Persuaders” by Vance Packard.  The book contained a study authored by James Vicary. According to the study, subliminal messages shown as flashes (usually 5-10 milliseconds long) during movies in movie theaters led to a direct increase in sales of popcorn and coca cola.

James Vicary called these flashes “Subliminal Advertising” in his popular conference which was held in 1957. He astonished reporters at the conference by claiming that sales of coca cola due to these flashes had risen by 57%

Absurdly, the conference was met with outrage. “Welcome to 1984” was the rallying cry being thrown around. Vicary later acknowledged that he hadn’t done enough research to go public and many people now consider the study to be wholly fabricated.

PERPETUANCE:

The Orwellian fear reached a new high in 1973, when a book called “Subliminal Seduction” claimed that advertisers regularly used/sent messages as flashes to influence our choices when it comes to daily use products. There was such paranoia surrounding Subliminal advertising that it was labelled “Contrary to public interest” by the Federal Communications Council of USA due to its “deception” of the general public.

In 2006, an experiment was performed by a couple of social psychologists, Johann Karremans and Wolfgang Stroebe. The point of the experiment was to see if subliminal advertising actually works. They found that it works only to a certain extent under certain limiting conditions (the experiment was performed in a lab) and particularly with brands that people actually knew about or sometimes liked. Nevertheless, the experiment was inconclusive for its consumption by the mass public.

In 2015, BBC conducted a test to finally settle this. 98 people volunteered for the test. The volunteers were shown flashes of Lipton Ice Tea. They were made to feel thirsty and were then asked in a questionnaire later if they wanted to drink ice tea or water. The result was not significant at all. The experiment could not disprove the effect of subliminal advertising. (The details of the test can be found here: http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-30878843)

CONCLUSION

Clearly, such a space requires more research and study. But let’s consider an example before signing off: In 2000, during the USA presidential elections, an ad released by the republican side, had the word DEMOCRATS written in such a way that RATS was highlighted in RED. The republicans were accused of using subliminal advertising, which they claimed was false. The republicans ended up winning that year. And for those who don’t know, that was the year George W Bush was elected president.

CONSUMERISM LIFE SQUARED

Introduction

Consumerism is one of the strongest forces affecting our lives in the modern world.  The term ‘consumerism’ does not simply refer to immediate factors in our daily lives such as the omnipresence of advertising, but anything connected to the overarching idea in our modern society that in order to be happier, better and more successful people we have to have more stuff. 

In this booklet, we will explore the power of consumerism, how it manifests itself in our lives and the effects it has on us. 

Advertising

Every day, each of us is bombarded with around 1,600 commercial messages.   This sounds like a massive number, but when you think about a typical day in your life it is quite possible.  A typical day might feature the following activities – get up, read the paper (featuring advertisements), listen to the radio (advertisements), catch the bus to work (advertisements on the bus and at the roadside), arrive at work (advertisements on the internet), go home (same advertisements as on the incoming journey), watch TV (advertisements) and go to bed.  Needless to say, this is exposure to a lot of advertisements! 

Just take an example from one source – in a randomly-selected weekday edition of The Sun newspaper  there are forty one advertisements, taking up roughly twenty two pages of a sixty four page paper.  Over one third of the paper consists of advertisements!  This does not include the full page specifically devoted to classified ads, an entire section sponsored by a company, the prominent product logos in the sports section or the other product placements that are included in many of the articles themselves.

We are exposed to advertising through a range of different sources.  Some of them we may be aware of (like the examples listed above) but others may be less easy to spot, such as product placement in films.  For example, a James Bond film might feature lead characters using mobile phones made by a particular manufacturer who has paid a handsome sum to make them do this.  For this fee, manufacturers would expect a few close ups of the product’s logo when the characters use it.  One of the most famous cases of product placement was the use of the American chocolate sweet ‘Reese’s Pieces’ in the film ET in 1982.  As a result of this placement, sales of the product increased by sixty five per cent.   Placement has now become so common that some films are being criticised for becoming little more than vehicles for a range of products.  The 1997 James Bond film ‘Tomorrow Never Dies’ featured placement for the following products - Visa card, Avis car rentals, BMW cars and motorcycles, Smirnoff vodka, Heineken beer, Omega watches, Ericsson mobile phones and L'Oreal make up.  It’s a wonder there was any time left for a plot.

Despite occasional criticism however, product placement remains widespread – in films, TV programmes, magazines and other media.  So, commercial messages even affect how we are entertained.

But it goes further than this.  In her seminal book on consumer culture ‘No Logo’, Naomi Klein identified a range of underground tools that marketers use to get us to do things - tools that we cannot hope to identify unless we are insiders within the advertising industry.  One example of such a tool is ‘street promoters’ – people who will “hype brands one-on-one on the street, in the clubs and on-line”.   In other words, companies are attempting to recruit our friends and peers to sell us things – not simply influencing them to believe a product is desirable and telling us about it, but by actually paying people to use their status and relationships with others to flog their products to their peers.  This seems a rather cynical exploitation of human relationships and trust.

This massive amount of advertising is now such a normal part of western society that most of us do not seem to realise just how pervasive it is in our lives.  As you go through your day tomorrow, notice the number of adverts you see and the sources from which they appear, and you will discover just how much of your valuable time and brain space advertisers are forcing themselves into.  Surely we have better things to do during this period of ‘hijacked’ time?

It is not simply the ‘irritant factor’ of advertising that is the problem however.  Although we may have stopped noticing just how much we are being bombarded by advertising, it is still affecting our decisions, our worldviews and our lives generally.  We will consider just how much later in this booklet. 

Consumerism – beyond advertising

Advertising is just the tip of the iceberg.  There are many other influences in modern society that promote the ‘values’ of consumerism.  To get a sense of these influences, imagine yourself as the recipient of ‘mental inputs’, the messages that enter your brain from the outside world.  They could include the opinions of your friends, images from TV news programmes, advertisements on the internet and things you have learned from books or your education.  Some of the major sources of inputs can be illustrated as follows:

This is not an exhaustive list, but even if we only consider a selection of these we can see that many of them promote and support consumerism.

For example, newspapers and magazines do not just contain pages of advertisements but also stories about new gadgets, new clothes, property, makeovers, travel and many other things, all suggesting that having them will make life more fun and interesting, bring you greater freedom or bring some other positive change to your life.  They may not promote an item directly like an advertisement but many will help to create desires and needs in the reader – some relating to specific products like cars or clothes and others relating to particular ways of life that require further money and consumption. 

Our modern obsession with celebrities also means that newspapers and magazines publish stories about glamorous people we might aspire to copy, and much of this aspiration is to consume the same things as they do – from designer clothes to private jets. 

Overarching all of this is a tendency in the mass media (in the UK, at least) to be unable or unwilling to question consumerism as an idea.  When this lack of critical thinking is accompanied by the promotion of consumerism that we have just been describing, this amounts to implicit support for it.  Moreover, in their coverage of issues where consumerism could well be a major cause (e.g. poverty, climate change etc.) the media appear to be unwilling to make this link – somehow consumerism is regarded as an untouchable component of modern society.  This applies to most mass media, whatever their political leanings and whether they are tabloid or ’quality’.

So it is not just the advertising within newspapers and magazines (or indeed other media – from radio to the internet) that promotes consumerism, but also much of their actual content.  This content might not only consist of features that directly create needs and desires in people but it might also include those that deal with topics that are apparently unrelated to consumerism that somehow still manage to give support to its vision of the world.

Leisure activity is another source of mental inputs.  One example of a leisure activity that supports consumerism is sport – perhaps most notably football.  Even at its most basic level – a kickabout in the park – the game is touched by consumerism.  There is pressure on children (and indeed adults!) to have the latest boots, kit and the latest version of the strip of their favourite team.  And clubs are well aware of the commercial value of people’s loyalty to their team – many launch a new kit each year, with both ‘home’ and ‘away’ variants, along with numerous other items in their club shops.  One of the most mystifying aspects of this is when fans buy an updated version of a team’s strip that is no different from the previous one other than the fact that the sponsor displayed on the front has changed.  This surely shows the power of consumerism – people being prepared to spend £45 to advertise your company for you!

At a higher level, football has become mired in consumerism and greed.  Top players can earn in excess of £100,000 per week, creating role models for children that are not based on excelling at the sport they love but on earning as much as possible and achieving a particular lifestyle.  Football and consumerism seem to have become intertwined, and the same thing is happening in many other sports, including rugby, cricket and tennis.

A final example of a source of mental input is our family and peers, who can influence us in subtle ways.  Even sitting at home with one’s family chatting about holiday plans or in the pub with friends discussing someone’s new mobile phone can create new needs or feelings of pressure.  Mixing with people who have consumerist lifestyles can therefore be a powerful influence on us.  It can often seem as if this is the only way to behave and that these are the only aspirations to have.  In short, it is another thing that helps the consumerist philosophy to maintain its power in society. 

The influence of other people on us can go way beyond friends and family however.  If we look around and see that everyone is living consumerist lives with consumerist aspirations – from our neighbours to film stars to politicians – it is likely that most of us will accept this as the only way of life that is available, or if not the only one then the best.

These are just a few examples of the many ‘mental inputs’ we receive, but in almost any area of life we can find consumerism wrapping its tentacles around us.  Overall, this means that consumerism is the all-pervasive theme in our culture - a way of life and a judgement about what the best life is.  It seeps into most parts of our lives, whether we are aware of it or not, and can profoundly affect each of us.

The effects of consumerism

It might be argued that we should have the mental strength to resist the influence of an advertisement or our friends, or that consumerism is nothing more than a minor irritant in our everyday lives.  But that would be to underestimate its power.

Exposure to one advertisement can be powerful enough to influence someone.  Otherwise, why would Coca Cola alone spend $2 billion per year on advertising?   But when we are exposed to thousands of advertisements a day (and have been from childhood), and consumerism is promoted in most of the mental inputs we receive, this can trap us within a consumerist bubble and can mould our entire worldviews – our aspirations, views, lifestyles and many other things.  And this trap is very difficult to escape from.  Indeed, such is its power, we may not even realise we are caught in a trap.  So, the real power of consumerism comes from its cumulative effect - the fact that it has seeped into every aspect of our lives, and that these elements of our culture continually reinforce each other.

Some of the effects of consumerism on us are what one might expect from a culture that promotes consumption.  We slip into a cycle of wanting more things – whether it is the new iPod, another holiday abroad or simply a particular type of food – and the pursuit of these things takes up our time, energy, stress and money (sometimes money we do not have – one reason for the spiralling debt of Britons today).   We also constantly compare ourselves with other people (both real and fictitious), wanting to be like them or in their position.  This leads us into a state of constant dissatisfaction – we are never happy with what we have and are always on edge.  And this is just what the logic of consumerism wants, as it makes us more active consumers on a continuous basis.  So, consumerism not only affects our behaviour (we spend more time on consumerist activities) but also our thinking (our aspirations, attitudes and worldviews).

Other effects are perhaps less immediately obvious but equally important.  For example, consumerism can affect our worldviews and confuse us - especially when we start feeling that our lives are not providing us with what we need to be happy.  From the Western perspective, we might have all the elements that constitute a good quality of life – job, car, house and other material possessions.  But we might nevertheless feel somehow dissatisfied and empty, feeling that the pursuit of more possessions and the pressure of having to earn more money or sink into further debt to pay for this lifestyle is bringing more costs than benefits to our lives.

This situation can be extremely difficult to escape from, as there are very few dissenting voices on consumerism in modern society – the mainstream idea of what it is to be ‘ethical’ still does not incorporate the idea of escaping the consumerist trap.  Any individual struggling with their consumerist lifestyle is therefore unlikely to receive understanding, guidance or support from mainstream society or their friends if they too are immersed within this mainstream society.   

There may well be millions of people who feel this sense of dissatisfaction in their lives but are not able to identify its cause or escape from it.  Although consumerism is not the only reason why one might feel dissatisfied or stressed, evidence is building among psychologists that “holding a strongly materialist values orientation is, all else being equal, detrimental to psychological well-being”.  

What is wrong with consumerism?

There is not necessarily anything morally wrong in buying and selling things, nor even in promoting them (in an honest way and to a certain extent).  But the extreme form of consumerism that now dominates the Western world has a number of unpleasant and even potentially dangerous characteristics. 

It is intrusive 
This is as good a reason as any to dislike it!  Advertising, selling and product placement is simply an annoying imposition on one’s peace and personal space.  Advertising is everywhere, and spoils many experiences and pleasant views.  It is like having a stranger following you and shouting at you for several hours a day.

It is manipulative
Both advertising and consumerism itself try to manipulate us into adopting a particular view of how we should live rather than letting us decide for ourselves. 

One might argue that advertisements are simply there to make people aware of the products available to them and serve no purpose other than this.  But this is not always the case.  Many advertisements and other communications in our consumer society go way beyond this function and attempt to manipulate people into making particular decisions.

Modern advertising is not just about telling people that a product exists – i.e. responding to an existing want or need someone may have.  It is now about creating wants and needs that we might not have had before seeing the advertisement.  In other words, it creates false desires and needs in us by manipulating us.  The advertiser’s ultimate purpose in creating these needs is always to make people want their product.

But how dare anyone manipulate us into having these wants and needs?

If I really wanted to do something - say, purchase a particular product - I would decide for myself that I needed it and then make my own mind up about which product to buy once I had seen what products were available.  If however someone tries to persuade me that I need a particular product when I do not and then attempts to create (false) feelings of dissatisfaction in me if I do not have it, this is an aggressive attempt to exercise power over me.  This ‘mental aggression’ is just as unpleasant as physical aggression, because its effect can be equally, if not more, harmful.

At the end of his book ‘Authenticity’, David Boyle notes that he asked himself whether the book (about moving away from a society dominated by marketing, spin and fakes) was just for middle-aged people.  He concluded “maybe it is, but I actually think a yearning for the real is shared by people far younger than me, because they don’t like to be taken for a ride”.  

It does not meet our needs 
Some people may believe that consumerism meets all their desires in life.  But for an increasing number of people it does not.  It creates impossible aspirations – quite simply, the principles it is based on make it a logical impossibility that it will make us happy.  If the idea of consumerism is to continually create new needs in people and make them consume more, this will result in us constantly chasing after a carrot on a stick.  Although we might reach it sometimes (e.g. by buying a particular product), a new ‘carrot’ (i.e. need) will then appear.  A lack of fulfilment is therefore built into the whole idea of consumerism. This is not surprising – if the system is not aimed at meeting human needs and interests, but at generating profit, then it will only be a matter of extreme luck that it ends up doing the former.

The second point follows on from this: consumerism cannot provide many of the things that are important to us.  This view is supported by recent studies in the relatively new discipline of ‘human well-being’ which is gaining increasing interest from politicians and others.  It can broadly be described as the study of what makes human beings happy and fulfilled, and the desire to base political and social systems on promoting these things.

Research in this area is showing that consumerism is inconsistent with human well-being.  The New Economics Foundation is a think tank at the heart of this topic and in a discussion paper setting out the political territory of the topic they note that:

 “The areas in which greater [financial] investment will yield continued improvements in well-being lie beyond the reach of markets”

In other words, economic markets and consumption can fulfil some of our basic needs – including areas such as food and shelter - but there are other important things they simply cannot provide.  The paper’s author, Richard Reeves, describes these things as ‘non-market goods’.  As he notes:

 “There is little wrong with Faberge or Furbys.  It is what [they are] failing to give us: companionship, time for reflection, spirituality, security, intellectual development and joy in our children”

The problem is that consumerism often claims that it can provide us with these things.  Firstly, advertisers link their products to real human needs.  An example of this cited by Reeves is an advertising campaign for Doritos tortilla chips that linked the product to the idea of friends and companionship.   Secondly, advertisements will suggest (or at least, strongly imply) that the product can help to fulfil these real human needs.  In the Doritos example, the advertisement seems to suggest that “buying their tortilla chips is one way to boost companionship, styling them ‘friendchips’”.   So, consumerism pretends to be able to meet our real needs – but it can not.  This process of misleading people about critically important human needs represents one of the saddest aspects of consumerism’s manipulative power.

It has been encouraging recently to see the Government and political parties beginning to develop policies to promote human well-being.  Their efforts will never be successful, however, if they seek to achieve them within an economic system that continues to allow (in fact, encourage) the present culture of consumerism.  The same could be said for attempts to address key global issues such as climate change and poverty.  This is firstly because the culture of consumerism conflicts with the aims of human well-being (both globally and individually – e.g. poverty reduction and sustainable living) and also because it is so strong and all-encompassing that it makes it extremely difficult for people to see the inconsistencies within it or easily pursue alternatives.

It restricts our choices and lives
Even if consumerism did meet our needs it would not be an acceptable philosophy on which to base our societies because we need to be able to choose the lives we want to lead and it prevents us from doing this.

In its broadest sense, consumerism can be seen as a particular view of the ‘good life’ – a view that says life is better when you have more ‘market goods’ (products, services and activities).  It was not originally set up as a specific philosophy or with any particular aim in mind – in fact, it may not have been ‘set up’ at all but may simply have developed as a result of a range of factors, including the desire for growth that is implicit within our global economic system, the need to get economies and societies back on track after the Second World War, the technological developments of the last sixty years and the spread of new forms of communication.

But regardless of its origins, it does now represent a particular view of how we should live.  There are, however, many other ways we could live (e.g. simple living or a focus on time and people rather than possessions), some of which people may feel are more appropriate for them. 

There will always be some cultural system that forms the basis of society. This will always feature a particular view of ‘the good life’.  We need a system that sees choice as a key aspect of the good life.  Not the idea of ‘consumer choice’ that is so often presented to us in the modern world but a system that enables people to have real choices about the lives they want to lead, gives them the skills they need to make these choices and encourages them to pursue the lives they really want.

Consumerism is completely inappropriate for this role, as it is a system that actually restricts our ability to see the choices available to us in life, make choices or put them into action.  It only promotes its own view of ‘the good life’ – attempting to make people become better consumers - rather than helping people to see the full range of options open to them and helping them to decide for themselves what they want.  It pretends that it offers people choices and freedom beyond its own view of the good life.  You know the sort of thing – advertisements saying ‘You’re you.  Be you.  You can be what you want’ and other such nonsense.  But all that this is doing is encouraging you to feel free within the consumerist parameters they are setting for you.  And that is not real freedom.

A key reason why it restricts people so effectively is that it has become a massively powerful force, with an influence across most areas of society and our individual lives.  And as it is the basic culture of our society, very few people are going to be able to see beyond it.

It therefore becomes very difficult to question or escape from the consumerist worldview, even if one feels strongly that something is wrong with one’s life within it.  This is particularly difficult when consumerism claims to be able to meet all our needs, because it leads to self-doubt and confusion about our identity, happiness and life direction which is painful to experience and which, for many people, is never resolved. 

It affects our worldviews and characters
Consumerism does not just restrict our choices.  It is also a significant influence on our perspectives on the world.  For example, if we are spending much of our time and energy seeking the next product or activity to consume then we have less time and enthusiasm to learn about the world or broaden our horizons.  Also, consumerism is unlikely to prompt us (or make it easy for us) to question important things such as the availability of the resources that maintain our lifestyles, the capacity of the planet to hold the waste we generate or the vulnerability of the centralized, import-reliant food supply systems we currently use.

Also, consumerism plays a role in moulding our characters – perhaps in ways we would rather it did not.  For example, if the whole aim of consumerism is to get us to acquire more, then it might well lead to excessive self interest in the people affected by it.  If it includes the pursuit of interests other than human (or value-driven) ones then it seems likely that those following this path will have less time for, or interest in, other people.

It is unsustainable
We live on a planet with a rapidly growing population (6.7 billion people and counting) and a finite set of natural resources for this population to consume.  We’ve moved from using around half the planet’s biocapacity in 1961 to over 1.25 times it in 2003.  We are already living way beyond the planet’s limits. 

Given this worrying situation, it seems obvious that we can’t continue with the ever-increasing levels of consumption demanded by consumerism without major consequences.  In fact, what we urgently need is precisely the opposite of consumerism – namely, a philosophy that urges us to reduce our levels of consumption.

What can we do about it?

Changes we can make to society
As we have seen, consumerism is an idea that is woven into the fabric of our modern society.  It is intricately linked with the particular economic philosophy that has dominated the West in recent decades – that of neoliberal capitalism.   To move away from a culture of consumerism, we will therefore need to challenge the philosophy and values of this current economic system.  Essentially, we need a cultural shift in our society and its values.  Perhaps the current financial crisis gives us the ideal opportunity to think about the direction in which we’re heading as a society, and to consider new ideas like this.

One of the key tenets of neoliberal economic philosophy has been the need to seek constant economic growth, as this will provide us with the best lives.  As consumerism builds ever greater demand for goods and services, it is easy to see how it plays an important role in driving this economic growth.

This neoliberal economic philosophy is not working.  And it’s not surprising when you think about the faulty assumptions that it is based on.  It is based on the view that human beings are rational calculating machines seeking to maximise our share of available goods.  All of the systems and institutions that we go through in life and the communications we receive in day-to-day life serve to promote lives that uphold this view - so it profoundly affects and moulds our world views.  This makes many of us miserable, for a number of reasons we have already covered:

• It is based on a restricted and incorrect view of what makes us happy.  We aren’t simply ‘consumers’ who want to maximise our share of goods – we are also human beings who need love, relationships, cooperation, nature and, above all, the ability to choose the lives we want.  This view therefore leads to a system that fails to give us what we need and forces many people to live lives they might not otherwise choose.  It also puts pressure on us to behave in particular ways or be particular people that may not be 'us' and may therefore cause us stress and anxiety; 
• This system actively prevents us from making our own choices about how we want to live our lives, as it only promotes this one restricted view of what a ‘good life’ consists of (for example, buying more stuff) and doesn’t give us any opportunities to consider alternative views or ways of living.  Many people therefore end up believing that this is the only way to live, in the absence of any alternatives.  We end up trapped in this way of thinking and unable to make real choices about how we want to live.

Our current choice of economic system is not only bad for our well-being. It is also one of the central influences exacerbating key global problems such as the environment (including climate change and the unsustainable use of natural resources) and social justice (including poverty and human rights abuses).  Our own well-being and global problems are therefore two sides of the same coin.  We urgently need a new system that will put these things right too. 

We need to move towards a society that has a much broader and nuanced view of what gives people well-being and happiness, and use the economic system simply as one of the means we employ to achieve this end, rather than as an end in itself.  We need to do all this within parameters of sustainability and social justice.  This type of approach to society is often referred to as ‘new economics’. 

This is a system that sees real choice as a key aspect of the good life. It enables people to have real choices about the lives they want to lead, gives them the skills they need to make those choices, and encourages them to pursue the lives they really want.

So how might a system of new economics look?  It would seek to promote human happiness and well-being by equipping us with the basic material and non-material resources we need in order to live the lives we want. It would include a basic level of material goods such as food, drink, shelter and money, plus nonmaterial goods such as the life skills we need to be truly self-determined and live happily.

The new system would also promote particular conditions that are felt to be conducive to human flourishing, such as stronger local communities, greater equality, education to promote well-being and the opportunity for children to grow without being exposed to influences (such as advertising) that they are not yet equipped to deal with.  Measures on the latter point might include a ban on all forms of advertising to children under sixteen and regulation to ensure that advertisements are labelled to show that they are attempting to communicate a message for a specific purpose.  There would also be regulation to ensure that we live within the resources of the planet and within some boundaries of social justice.   

For a more detailed discussion of what a better future might look like, read Richard Docwra’s book ‘Modern Life – as good as it gets’.

Changes we can make to our own lives
These changes in society will not happen overnight.  There are however some immediate steps we can each take in our own lives to release ourselves from the grip of consumerism, and to start living the lives we really want.

• Exercise intellectual independence - be aware of how consumerism touches your life and when people or organisations are trying to manipulate you. Try to defend yourself from unwanted external pressures.  One effective way to do this is to simply ignore advertising – don’t let it affect you or take up any of your time or brain space.  Avoidance is one strategy, but it is also important to build up the intellectual independence to deal with consumerism. When you receive any message, whether it is in a social conversation, at work, in a newspaper, or on television, consider the source it came from and whether it might have a particular agenda. Decide whether you can trust it and whether you should make any allowances for it in your interpretation of the message.  You can then choose whether the message is to be digested or ignored.  You can apply this questioning approach beyond specific messages such as advertisements to challenge even broader cultural or social beliefs such as the importance of striving for greater material wealth.

• Consume less, live more - take some time to stand back from your life, away from influences like consumerism, and think about what really matters to you in life and how you want to live.  Then, try to live the life you want, not the one that others would like you to lead. For many of us, a life of consumerism and constantly striving to gain further material wealth is not the one we would choose upon honest reflection. Many of us will find that reducing our levels of consumption, caring less about materialism and refocusing our attention and time towards things that really matter to us will eliminate a lot of problems in our lives and give us a great deal more satisfaction, whilst also leading to a more sustainable and fair future for all.

For more ideas on how to thrive in the face of consumerism, have a look at some of the other resources we offer at Life Squared - visit www.lifesquared.org.uk.

Final points

In this booklet, we have not been suggesting that everyone who tries to sell things to others is deliberately manipulating them for evil ends.  Nor are we suggesting that consumerism was ‘invented’ by someone with malign intent - it is simply a cultural phenomenon that has emerged over time and that happens to have a powerful influence in our societies and individual lives.  We are all born into it and raised with it, therefore it is difficult to blame those who are delivering what the norms of the system say is desirable. 

There are however many people who are escaping the hold of consumerism or are questioning the effect it has on our lives.  And we suggest that the modern form of consumerism has gone way too far and is taking our lives, hopes and happiness with it.