26 Nov Accumulation by Dispossession, or Black Friday

I spared everyone my annual Thanksgiving-is-a-Celebration-of-Genocide Annual Diatribe this year. Am i getting old? or just more cautious? I recognize that thanksgiving has become a Family Holiday, but posting on Facebook about the things one is thankful for does not a Thanks-giving make. Nor does the slaughter and cooking of 45 million turkeys make me very thankful for much. But i suppose it is apropos as it is a celebration of slaughter. Why stop at an entire people?

But that’s not what i decided to write about today (but do excuse me if i wander back – old habits die hard).

Today started with a friend on the East Coast desperately trying to get from the mountains to the lowlands to attend his father’s birthday party. He complained that there were fewer buses running, no cars available and everything is more expensive. “Hey, i’ve got a great idea – how about everyone in the whole country do the same thing at once for WAY more money!!!” (emphasis his – this is from a Skype chat). And then it struck me: my morning news feeds were headlined by stories of Black Friday – Black Friday an all night shopathon, Black Friday: Determined shoppers swarm Southern California stores, Retail CEO see longer Black Friday Lines. A fight already broke out in Los Cerritos Center in LA by the time i woke up this morning.

But what is this Black Friday? A friend recently posted an article about how retailers get shoppers to spend more money on Black Friday. Unfortunately, i can’t find it, but i did find another and a very comprehensive one here. What i don’t understand is how it can be legal to be so misleading – especially the jacking up of original prices to display deal prices that are not much of deals after all.

So why all this price gouging and who gets gouged? I wonder.

I have been (slowly) working on a book review of Harvey’s Cosmopolitanism and the Geographies of Freedom. It’s taking so long because i keep stopping to go read other books he’s referenced. Which, in the case of accumulation by dispossession meant i had to go back to Chapter 4 of The New Imperialism and then Chapter 25 of Capital. And this is where my holiday spirit has been sucked out of me.

Harvey points out that ‘primitive’ or ‘original’ accumulation seems a little strange in the face of the continual accumulation that is “based upon predation, fraud, and violence” (144), thus his term “accumulation by dispossession.” He goes on to list the processes of Marx’s primitive accumulation:

…the commodification and privatization of land and the forceful expulsion of peasant populations; the conversion of various forms of property rights (common, collective, state, etc.) into exclusive private property rights; the suppression of rights tot he commons; the commodification of labour power and the supression of alternative (indigenous) forms of production and consumption; colonial, neo-colonial, and imperial processes of appropriation of assets (including natural resources); the monetization of exchange and taxation, particularly of land; the slave trade; and usury, the national debt, and ultimately the credit system as radical means of primitive accumulation. (145)

All of these now roll neatly into the 21st century. But it is in the formation of the working class that Harvey’s point hits home today. We are in a financial crisis. As much as 20% of Washington State’s employed are underemployed, another 10% are unemployed. And yet, there is a kind of American Duty to shop-shop-shop on Black Friday. It’s a strange kind of mixture of moral-patriotic-bonding spirit tied to the Big Day of Shopping that everyone prepares for. People are eager to spend money they don’t have and may need to hang on to, all for a piece of the holiday action. It’s a strange moment in American political and class history. There is the rise of Sarah Palin and the Tea Party; there is the racist and anti-intellectual anti-Obamam tide; there is the not-so-sudden, but certainly reaching fever pitch rise in religious fervor; there are the ongoing wars in Afghanistan and Iraq along with the ongoing, ever fuzzy War on Terror…all of these are hitting home in the formation of a new working class of America – one that has not made enough to survive on for the past 30 years; one that is convinced that they can still cling to their home ownership dreams; one that thinks that if they work hard enough, they too, may become millionaires.

I ask my students every quarter how many will be millionaires when they grow up. Invariably, 70-80% of the students raise their hands. There is such a strong belief in their own ability to make it to that top tax bracket. And they are starting life with a much better chance than any of the children i ever worked with at children’s clinic. They still believe – they still cling firmly to their understanding of the world that is inclusive – of a world that will welcome them with open arms, give them opportunities, shower them with praise and prizes. Their inability to understand that good looks and a charming smile do not a 4.0 get is proof enough of their naivety. Apparently, i’m not doing my job well enough.

I just watched a family walk by. Three sisters and a man (one of their boyfriends? he doesn’t have the golden blonde locks the girls all have). Two sisters were hugging joyfully as they walked, another was taking pictures. The boy(friend?) was walking along, looking a little out of place, hands in pockets. They were trailed by the parents and their two dogs. They looked so happy. And it suddenly occurs to me that these are what the holidays are meant to be about. They’re wandering lazily through the neighborhood, enjoying the warming weather and each other’s company.

How did holidays get to be so commercialized? How can we shift away from this model? How to celebrate without being sucked into the madness that is all slaughter and spending?