We are developing the social individualist meta-context for the future. From the very serious to the extremely frivolous... lets see what is on the mind of the Samizdata people.

Samizdata, derived from Samizdat /n. - a system of clandestine publication of banned literature in the USSR [Russ.,= self-publishing house]

Socialism sucks

And that is no longer just my pejorative opinion. It is a view that is being enthusiastically endorsed by its proponents:

During the May Day protests, we are going to be in the City of London vacuuming up after capitalism.

We’ll be there with our vacuum cleaners and warning people to watch out for the dirty capitalism all around them.

With our cleaners, we never let dirty capitalism settle.

I hope they intend to clean up after themselves. Last year’s ‘May Day’ marches left central London looking like an industrial tip.

So a lot of work is about humour because that really works. If people see a group of us vacuuming or praying, I think it’s more likely to get them to question things.

You’re right, the humour does work. I am already doubled up with laughter.

All the messages that are put about by advertisers are basically saying that shopping is the new religion. We were just taking it that little bit further.

Shopping as a religion? Damn, that’s a good idea. Anyone else fancy the idea of forming a Church of Conspicuous Consumption?

We had quite an interesting reaction. A lot of the shoppers were quite startled. Some of them laughed. Others looked at us as if we were idiots.

Conspicuous consumers are generally a perceptive and sensible lot.

Eventually the security guards threw us out. We’re not aggressive and we know that what we do and film takes place on private property so if they ask us to leave, we do.

Yet more ‘crushing of dissent’! Oh the humanity!!

The group goes into a store, all wearing the same shirts. Then, in a line, each member pushes around empty shopping trolleys [carts in America] in a quiet meditation.

Just silently contemplating all those seductive bargains.

I’ve got no illusions that what we do is going to stop people shopping. But the person who sees us praying or vacuuming may go home and have a question in their mind about the society we’ve created.

I’ll wager that the question in their mind is, how did you manage to fall from the Stupid Tree and hit every branch on the way down?

Whenever I get despondent about the state of the world, up pop the Children of the Revolution to remind me just how debased, banal and self-parodying they have become.

27 comments to Socialism sucks

  • Rob

    The guy in the picture outside Virgin seems to be cleaning up after capitalism with a really ropey-looking old vaccuum cleaner. He needs a nice powerful new multicyclone cleaner with a variety of interchangable fittings, available at great prices and on reasonable credit terms from most retailers of household electrical goods.

  • Johnathan

    I saw a bunch of these folk marching past our office this lunchtime. What a bunch of assholes. One group was carrying a banner with the faces of Marx, Lenin and Mao.

    I dunno how many people perished in China under Mao, but from my reading, the numbers are in the millions. Glad to see our “idealistic” yoof putting their faith in mass killers.

    Let’s have a march for capitalism some time

  • Andy Duncan

    …The guy in the picture outside Virgin seems to be cleaning up after capitalism with a really ropey-looking old vaccuum cleaner…

    Can’t we buy them a spanking new Dyson, a superior fruit from the bountiful tree of capitalism? To go, of course, with their satellite phones, internet cafes, and let us not forget their welfare cheques, which capitalism provides them with, in order to organise its destruction.

    Why don’t all these idiots just go buy an island, somewhere remote like Easter Island, go there, and STAY THERE, if they hate us all so much. Once the satellite phone batteries ran out, and the last of the welfare cash dried up, we’d see how long they would retain their hatred of capitalism. It could be an interesting experiment in how to cure people of socialism? They could all take tree seedlings and statues of the Mother Goddess; we’d spare them nothing spiritual.

    What’s the betting they’d be eating each other by the end of the second week? 🙂

  • MLD

    The Church of Conspicuous Consumption already exits. It’s called the Mall of America (see http://www.mallofamerica.com) one of the top tourist destinations in the US. Culture/smulture.

    I like the sermons. And the feeling of getting all sorts of really good crap at 1/2 price? Hallelujah, I have been saved.

  • J S Allison

    Shopping as a religion? Damn, that’s a good idea. Anyone else fancy the idea of forming a Church of Conspicuous Consumption?

    Sorry but it’s been done. I’m a long time member of the 1st Church of the Gooey Death and Discount House of Worship. Of course, this would be the mail order order. I don’t believe that there is a meatspace vending order as yet.

  • Those kids know shit about socialism. I’d like to stuff them into a time machine and send them back to Prague in, say 1973.

    Or, maybe a simple plane ticket to Havana or Pyongyang would do the job. One way, of course.

  • Johan

    Are they somewhat serious? What a fun life going around eating, thinking and breathing anti-capitalistic feelings and opinions every day. Geez, do they have any life at all? They’re probably angry and mad all day long…

    “So a lot of work is about humour because that really works.”

    Oh yeah? That must be a weird way of thinking. Hate (against capitalism) nourish humor? What they seem to be missing here is that capitalism isn’t a vague, alien, behind the screens system. People have created it because they want it, so in order for them to suck up capitalism, they have to suck up (read: get rid of in any way – Stalin&Lenin&Mao are the prime examples of HOW) ordinary people. And for that, they need a HUGE vacuum cleaner.

    Maybe capitalism could provide them with one?

  • S. Weasel

    Down with sharp pointy things! More soft fluffy things!

  • Paul Zrimsek

    The Church of the Shopping Bag might be a catchier name. Or would that be sackreligious?

  • mark holland

    Thomas,

    You’d think they’d get the idea in Berlin. But no they even managed to riot in a place called Mauerpark, Mauer = wall for goodness sake.

    Pictures in der Speigel.

  • Kat

    I would love to have a tee shirt that had that phrase in big red letters “Socialism Sucks” I wonder if there is any place I could find one.

  • Kat

    I would love to have a tee shirt that had that phrase in big red letters “Socialism Sucks” I wonder if there is any place I could find one.

  • Kat

    I would love to have a tee shirt that had that phrase in big red letters “Socialism Sucks” I wonder if there is any place I could find one.

  • Kat

    Love your web site hate the comments section i swear I only hit it once…sorry

  • Blimme

    Anti-protestors protest suggestion: England’s shopkeepers be sent mug shots of the protestors, memorise the uglies and if they happen to enter a store to buy food, clothes, petrol, cameras and film, hats, shoes, chocolates, books, aplliances, movies, the shop-keeper shall refuse to sell.

    Let the rodents starve.

  • Chuck T.

    I’ve heard about some idiots here in the States who walk around Wal-Marts once a month (they call it Whirl-Mart ritual resistance). “The ritual takes place on the first Sunday of every month and lasts for approximately one hour” according to breathingplanet.net (run by Andrew Linn, who proudly displays his Russian entry visa on the homepage). Guess I know where and when to go shopping now.

  • Chuck T.

    I’ve heard about some idiots here in the States who walk around Wal-Marts once a month (they call it Whirl-Mart ritual resistance). “The ritual takes place on the first Sunday of every month and lasts for approximately one hour” according to breathingplanet.net (run by Andrew Linn, who proudly displays his Russian entry visa on the homepage). Guess I know where and when to go shopping now.

  • Chuck T.

    I did a google search and came upon a short indymedia thread at http://idaho.indymedia.org/news/2002/12/343.php on some variation of this. Apparently the Wal-Mart employees didn’t really care they were there (or, in the indymedia posters words were “actively ignoring” them).

  • Chuck T.

    I did a google search and came upon a short indymedia thread at http://idaho.indymedia.org/news/2002/12/343.php on some variation of this. Apparently the Wal-Mart employees didn’t really care they were there (or, in the indymedia posters words were “actively ignoring” them).

  • Chuck T.

    The next comment on indymedia.I thought at first had to be a parody, but looking at the author’s other posts, it looks like I was wrong and the guy (“Blizz”) is just an idiot. Try not to laugh to hard:

    “Scott Ritter fielding questions after his talk at BSU stated that the US is imperialistic, using its power to gain access to 5 times the norm of the earths resources.
    The empty cart will defeat terrorism.”

    That’s right: “THE EMPTY CART WILL DEFEAT TERRORISM”

    BTW, I too hate the comment-posting here.

  • I have always thought that the City is the cleanest part of London (except maybe for Canary Wharf). The reason for this is the obvious one that all the capitalists have plenty of money with which to pay for cleaners.

  • Jacob

    Somebody said that Socialism works fine as long as there are enough capitalists to finance them.

  • mark holland

    Michael isn’t Canary Wharf in Tower Hamlets?

  • Guy Herbert

    This thing is evolving. The capitalism protested against is a an even stranger creature of the imagination than the ’68 revolutionaries’ version.

    I was particularly intrigued by the well-publicised demonstration against trouserism. Whatever it is, it sounde like a cause I could support.

    No platform for trouserists!

    (BTW Canary Wharf never did get the EC5 postcode.)

  • Peter Sykes

    He he! I get tired of these people talking complete rubbish, they should be pleased that they have the freedom to do what they do. Under a socialist system, this freedom would not be allowed.

    Socialism Sucks T-Shirts sound great, put an order in for me! (I don’t have to queue for 5 days to get one provide by the state do I?)

  • Petersykes

    He he! I get tired of these people talking complete rubbish, they should be pleased that they have the freedom to do what they do. Under a socialist system, this freedom would not be allowed.

    Socialism Sucks T-Shirts sound great, put an order in for me! (I don’t have to queue for 5 days to get one provide by the state do I?)

  • Xander from honduras

    it is sooo depressive that after so long, they still think socialism is the way. im sure that all that bullshit they say is all small talk, id like to see them eating shit out of the trashcans in havana.
    dont they wonder why so many cubans leave cuba and rather jump into a raft than put to Fidel´s crap.
    i am seriously thinking of getting a shirt that says ´´i whipe my ass with socialism´´.
    ps.
    french are pussies