UNLEASH YOUR SHACKLES, SLAVES OUGHT TO BE FREE

In a truly democratic economy, we can take production in our own hands


I have been meaning to say this for a long time. It is one of my main intellectual preoccupations. Something I can not solve in my own mind, or just by myself.

As I see it, our present day consumer society is nothing different, but much more pleasant to live in, than the ancient society of Roman slaves. The instrument of our submission is our seduction by manifold commercials and attractive contracts of labor. The key force behind our slavery is our very existence as a consumer.

Can we have it otherwise? I think we can.

For instance, I believe we do not need to stand passive when bankers and CEO’s of big companies cash in monetary benefits far beyond their actual added value. It is outrageous that we allow people to be paid huge sums for exercising powers that they should not have in the first place.

Secondly, on the other side of the fence, I think we are able to say no in all clarity to the massive waste that is produced at high cost every day in terms of useless products, superfluous advertisement, unnecessary packaging, meaningless diversity and senseless illusions, which we are expected to buy and to pay for.



Thirdly, it is my firm conviction that we have allowed our public interest and the interests of our markets to take a much too divergent course. We should re-assess what in our own minds, as citizens and as private individuals, is the true distinction between things which are relevant for us all and things in which we wish to retain our private choice.

But when I follow through my thoughts about these issues, I can almost not avoid – at least in my own mind – to end up in the construction of an utopia that would dwarf communism in most of its further implications.

What was so bad about communism? Essentially it was the arrogance of ‘state’. The gruesome inefficiency of centrally planned demand and supply; Its degeneration into murderous absolutism and its inability to rise effectively above collective poverty and mediocre industrial performance. The Trabant, the only car of fame built in the former East Germany, is the icon of the chronic lack of incentives to constantly improve as it persisted throughout the former East Block world.

Nothing of that we should wish for as an alternative to our present state of consumer slavery. Nobody would vouch for it, obviously. We rather cherish the illusion of our happiness than undermine it by the force of a terrorizing war against superfluity.



Secondly the weakness of my utopia is its assumption that humanity is basically ‘good’: economic, loving, social, cultivating the spiritual rather than the material, and so on. My utopia in other words is too naive to be realistic – as a rule of thumb - from the start.

So here you see my problem. Unless there is no such thing as scarcity (which is a fundamental underlying reality in every ‘model’). we can never be really free. But does this mean we should continue to accept corporate imperialism as it gradually undermines our sovereignty as citizens? Perhaps we should now recognize – at least – that ‘markets’ in our time are not the places of real choice as they used to be. And it follows that as consumers the only way to really counter this, is to become producers ourselves, each of us individually, if we were to restore true market freedom. Our technology in fact could help us along this way. It allows us to tell companies, just by pushing ‘enter’ on our laptop, to produce only as we order, in all dimensions, and give instructions for design as well. If we want to stand tall in the face of corporate power, then let us take the power of supply out of their hands.



The reality is, we can. We only need to put our minds to it. We are able to unleash our own shackles and share every bonus among each other.

In a world in which consumers are the producers at the same time, corporations are – nothing more and – nothing less than arbiters of resources, technology and distribution as we direct them according to our true needs. This seems to me a workable market. It would also mean that consumers push suppliers to be as mean and lean – and only as powerful – as we need them to be to supply us with the necessary goods in the most efficient, sustainable way.

But have I neutralized all my possible objections to the utopia that I have described above? It all boils down of course, however we look at, to our own behavior, the rigid application of our own sense of economy – of our needs and of the means in which we wish to satisfy them – and to our understanding of the bigger picture of the markets in which we wish to be active. This will take time, I have no doubt. But in fact we are already actively testing this in many different corners, however primitively as yet, such as news, clothes, books, photo albums etcetera.

The next implication is a political one. It requires governments to rethink markets and their own role in them just as much. We are on a long road, but I am convinced that in ten years time we will find ourselves much further on this road than most of us would now think feasible.

But perhaps, if we realize that this is about our freedom in all dimensions in the first place, we might feel we have many more incentives ready at hand to make all of this happen soonest.