Re: Two faces of the future of the world-system

...in relation to your remark about 'social trances',
likely future scenarios and what can be done about it,
i send you the following paper which i believe
explains a lot about where we are going and why, and
also some links that i think might be of interest to
you...

regards

ryan fortune
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Advertising at the Edge of the Apocalypse*
------------------------------------------------------
Sut Jhally
Department of Communication
University of Massachusetts at Amherst
Amherst, MA 01003

[In this article I wish to make a simple claim: 20th
century advertising is the most powerful and sustained
system of propaganda in human history and its
cumulative cultural effects, unless quickly checked,
will be responsible for destroying the world as we
know it. As it achieves this it will be responsible
for the deaths of hundreds of thousands of non-western
peoples and will prevent the peoples of the world from
achieving true happiness. Simply stated, our survival
as a species is dependent upon minimizing the threat
from advertising and the commercial culture that has
spawned it. I am stating my claims boldly at the
outset so there can be no doubt as to what is at stake
in our debates about the media and culture as we enter
the new millennium.]
 
COLONIZING CULTURE
------------------ 
Karl Marx, the pre-eminent analyst of 19th century
industrial capitalism, wrote in 1867, in the very
opening lines of Capital that: "The wealth of
societies in which the capitalist mode of production
prevails appears as an 'immense collection of
commodities' ". (Marx 1976, p.125) In seeking to
initially distinguish his object of analysis from
preceding societies, Marx referred to the way the
society showed itself on a surface level and
highlighted a quantitative dimension -- the number of
objects that humans interacted with in everyday life. 

Indeed, no other society in history has been able to
match the immense productive output of industrial
capitalism. This feature colors the way in which the
society presents itself -- the way it appears. Objects
are everywhere in capitalism. In this sense,
capitalism is truly a revolutionary society,
dramatically altering the very landscape of social
life, in a way no other form of social organization
had been able to achieve in such a short period of
time. (In The Communist Manifesto Marx and Engels
would coin the famous phrase "all that is solid melts
into air" to highlight capitalism's unique dynamism.)
It is this that strikes Marx as distinctive as he
observes 19th century London. The starting point of
his own critique therefore is not what he believes is
the dominating agent of the society, capital, nor is
it what he believes creates the value and wealth,
labor -- instead it is the commodity. From this
surface appearance Marx then proceeds to peel away the
outer skin of the society and to penetrate to the
underlying essential structure that lies in the
"hidden abode" of production. 

It is not enough of course to only produce the
"immense collection of commodities" - they must also
be sold, so that further investment in production is
feasible. Once produced commodities must go through
the circuit of distribution, exchange and consumption,
so that profit can be returned to the owners of
capital and value can be "realized" again in a money
form. If the circuit is not completed the system would
collapse into stagnation and depression. Capitalism
therefore has to ensure the sale of commodities on
pain of death. In that sense the problem of capitalism
is not mass production (which has been solved) but is
instead the problem of consumption. That is why from
the early years of this century it is more accurate to
use the label "the consumer culture" to describe the
western industrial market societies. 

So central is consumption to its survival and growth
that at the end of the 19th century industrial
capitalism invented a unique new institution - the
advertising industry - to ensure that the "immense
accumulation of commodities" are converted back into a
money form. The function of this new industry would be
to recruit the best creative talent of the society and
to create a culture in which desire and identity would
be fused with commodities - to make the dead world of
things come alive with human and social possibilities
(what Marx would prophetically call the "fetishism of
commodities"). And indeed there has never been a
propaganda effort to match the effort of advertising
in the 20th century. More thought, effort, creativity,
time, and attention to detail has gone into the
selling of the immense collection of commodities that
any other campaign in human history to change public
consciousness. One indication of this is simple the
amount of money that has been exponentially expended
on this effort. Today, in the United States alone,
over $175 billion a year is spent to sell us things.
This concentration of effort is unprecedented. 

TO READ THE FULL VERSION OF THIS ARTICLE, GO TO:
http://www.sutjhally.com/onlinepubs/onlinepubs_frame.html

OR IF YOU DON'T HAVE THE TIME, HERE'S ANOTHER CHOICE
QUOTE: 

"...Seeking this understanding will involve clarifying
what we mean by the power and effectiveness of ads,
and of being able to pose the right question. For too
long debate has been concentrated around the issue of
whether ad campaigns create demand for a particular
product. If you are Pepsi Cola, or Ford, or Anheuser
Busch, then it may be the right question for your
interests. But, if you are interested in the social
power of advertising - the impact of advertising on
society - then that is the wrong question. 

The right question would ask about the cultural role
of advertising, not its marketing role. Culture is the
place and space where a society tells stories about
itself, where values are articulated and expressed,
where notions of good and evil, of morality and
immorality, are defined. In our culture it is the
stories of advertising that dominate the spaces that
mediate this function. If human beings are essentially
a storytelling species, then to study advertising is
to examine the central storytelling mechanism of our
society. The correct question to ask from this
perspective, is not whether particular ads sell the
products they are hawking, but what are the consistent
stories that advertising spins as a whole about what
is important in the world, about how to behave, about
what is good and bad. Indeed, it is to ask what values
does advertising consistently push.

URL: 
http://www.sutjhally.com/onlinepubs/onlinepubs_frame.html
-------------------------------------------------------
A FEW OTHER SITES OF POSSIBLE INTEREST:

INTERNATIONAL SIMULTANEOUS POLICY ORGANISATION
http://www.simpol.org

ISHMAEL
http://www.ishmael.com

PARTICIPATORY ECONOMICS PROJECT
http://www.parecon.

ADBUSTERS
http://www.adbusters.org


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