DESIGN PRACTICE / RATIONALE
Within the Final Major Project I aim to work as professionally as possible. To me this means: quick turn around of work, consideration of audience and context, appropriateness and legibility of fonts and imagery and environmental and social accountability.
I want to create work that is ‘real’ – work that is useful in its own right or answers some kind of need as opposed to work that main purpose is to develop my design skills. However, while I want my outcomes to be ‘real’ and ‘professional’, this may be the last chance I have to experiment relatively risk free, and I intend to capitalise on this opportunity.
I also want to try and get an idea of where exactly I fit in within the graphic design industry. Although I intend on getting a job in a design studio as soon as possible after I graduate, I fully intend to set up my own practise a couple of years down the line. My Final Major Project could be a good chance to get in touch with other designers to inform my practise (but also as an excuse to show people my work).
CONTEXTUAL REFERENCES / INFLUENCES
I have just ordered a subscription to Creative Review, making it easier to follow the creative industries – as I often find it difficult to keep up with what’s happening. As well as this I need to make sure I check design blogs/websites.
Design wise, I would say my biggest influence would be Vince Frost. I can relate to, and look up to his intelligent and playful typographic approach to design, and see his work as something to strive towards. In terms of clients and design ‘ethos’, however, I would say that companies like The Ultimate Holding Company and The Ethical Graphic Design Company, who focus on pro bono and charity work.
SUBJECT
I wish to do educational design that addresses the issues of asylum and immigration. I don’t intend for this to turn into promotion of one point of view, I just wish to show that these issues need to be addressed from an objective and educated point of view.
RESEARCH AREAS / RESEARCH ACTIVITIES
I wish to speak to other designers (possibly Frost) to ask how they went about certain briefs, print processes, etc. as well as speaking designers who have dealt with similar briefs to mine to ask advice.
Read design magazines and books, as well as current affairs ones – such as Adbusters, The Guardian, New Statesman, etc.
I aim to check design websites and blogs regularly – such as Type Neu, The Serif, Design Activism, Another Limited Rebellion, etc. As well as non-design websites such as the Guardian, Wikipedia, BBC News, etc.
To research asylum and immigration I will need to look at the limited informational material available, talk to organisations such as No Borders, Home Office, Refugee Council, Refugee Action, etc., as well as research the oppositional organisations such as the BNP. I will also need to find out how much the general public knows about the issue.
DESIGN PRACTICE
I imagine my outcomes to be a combination of information design and advertising design. The design will have to be completely focused around the audience.
I have emailed the Head of Media at the Refugee Council to see if there is any way that my work can be developed for the Refugee Council in the hope that the work I produce at college will be used in the ‘real world’. I am awaiting a reply.
DESIGN CONTEXT
Obviously I will research the facts of immigration and asylum in the UK (such as laws, reasons for claiming asylum, what countries people come from, etc), but I will also need to find out what people already know or think they know.
I will need look at ways that issues like this can be addressed through design. How you can avoid isolating people, annoying them etc, and address them on their level.
Theories such as the Marxist/Post-Marxist ideas of ‘Othering’ and Carol. J Adams theory of the ‘absent-referent’ are important in explaining why people may be confrontational or stubborn when present with issues like the ones I intend on exploring.
I have emailed the Ultimate Holding Company asking if I can visit them to get advice, etc., and I have emailed the Ethical Design.
PROFESSIONAL ACTIVITIES
Hopefully, I will be back at Thompson in Easter, but as this is the only place I have any experience of working, I would like to do another work placement. If The Ultimate Holding Company agree to meet with me I may ask them about a placement.
I also intend on entering my work into the ISTD competition and entering the College’s End of Year Show competition again.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Frost – Sorry Trees
The Advertising Concept Book – Pete Barry
Guerrilla Advertising – Lucas and Dorraine
Good – Lucienne Roberts
Conscientious Objectives – Cranmer and Zapaterra
100 Habits of Successful Graphic Designers – Plazm
Print and Finish - Ambrose and Harris
Special Effects – Allrightsreserved
Citizen Designer – Steven Heller
The Layout Book – Ambrose and Harris
JOURNALS
Creative Review
Adbusters
Computer Arts
IDN
Guardian
New Statesman
WEBSITES
Typeneu.com
Theserif.net
Worldstudio.org
Frostdesign.com.au
Designactivism.net
ALRdesign.com
OTHER SOURCES
Contacts within the Refugee Council.
PROJECT PLAN / TIMESCALES
Week 1 - start initial research into facts and contact Refugee Council Media person.
Week 2 - hopefully start working short briefs for the Refugee Council and finding out information from them.
Week 3 - hopefully talk to people who work with asylum seekers and asylum seekers themselves. Figure out a way of finding out public opinion/knowledge of asylum seekers. Continue to work small briefs (if I get any).
Week 4 - possible work placement (reading week)
Week 5 - continue research and work on briefs. Figure how to categorise and present research.
Week 7 - should have started making book
Week 10 - send design to printers (Sat 4th April) to ensure book arrives in time for deadline
Sunday 25 January 2009
Sunday 23 November 2008
Interim Evaluation
Thompson/NMM Brief
The two things I wanted to do with this brief were practice layout and keep in touch with my work placement. I did both of these, so I am quite happy.
I feel my spreads are appropriate to the target audience, I have tried making them exciting, whilst keeping them simple and legible, and I feel I have achieved these.
I think that Thompson's cover is visually very exciting, where as mine is less so, but I think that mine more conceptually considered (although a lot riskier, I'm sure the client would go for the Thompson design every time).
Because I was working with Thompson, it did make it a little more awkward. On the same day that I showed the print in a crit, I got some feedback emailed to me from Thompson. The 2 sets of feedback were very different. This was awkward as they both made valid points, but at the same time felt obliged to change the design according to Thompson's feedback.
Another problem working remotely over email, especially on a project like this, is that it is quite hard to know exactly what the other person wants. This manifested itself at the start of the brief in the form of a Summer Seasonal print, with the Autumn Seasonal copy inside it...
I am ready to finish this brief and move on, but I need to wait to see if Thompson have any more feedback.
Ten Pounds
I set myself this brief as I thought it would be a really difficult thing to do, so I could really challenge myself.
At first it was really difficult. I was trying to make a press ad that informed people of the campaign (which is difficult because of how unique the campaign is), it also had to persuade people to take part (which again is difficult because people don't like giving there money away) and it had to encourage people to look at the website. Above all, it had to be simple.
Conceptually I am very pleased with my print ad, the strapline keeps it simple, and the writing inside the letters offers more information if the viewer chooses to read it. Visually I think that it is nearly there, but needs a little more work. Some of the letters need redrawing, and the logo may need revisiting.
To help promote the campaign I have done a similar thing that Wolfs Ollins did for London 2012 and (RED). I want the campaign to be a platform for other charities and organisations to promote themselves (whilst in turn promoting the campaign).
I now need to adapt the visual style for online viewing - webiste (front end design), web banner, graphic icon for social networking sites.
Through out this brief I have tried to be quite 'pragmatic' and professional as possible, by really thinking about the audience, context, branding, where this campaign fits in regard to other companies, causes and organisations. I feel I have approached it quite professionally in this sense, however, my time management has been (as ever) terrible and am little bit behind where I would like to be with this brief.
Converge
This started off as a 'responsible' design magazine, with the idea that it would be a branding and layout exercise. I came up with the name converge, which means coming together, with a logo that consisted of 3 lines coming together.
The two things I wanted to do with this brief were practice layout and keep in touch with my work placement. I did both of these, so I am quite happy.
I feel my spreads are appropriate to the target audience, I have tried making them exciting, whilst keeping them simple and legible, and I feel I have achieved these.
I think that Thompson's cover is visually very exciting, where as mine is less so, but I think that mine more conceptually considered (although a lot riskier, I'm sure the client would go for the Thompson design every time).
Because I was working with Thompson, it did make it a little more awkward. On the same day that I showed the print in a crit, I got some feedback emailed to me from Thompson. The 2 sets of feedback were very different. This was awkward as they both made valid points, but at the same time felt obliged to change the design according to Thompson's feedback.
Another problem working remotely over email, especially on a project like this, is that it is quite hard to know exactly what the other person wants. This manifested itself at the start of the brief in the form of a Summer Seasonal print, with the Autumn Seasonal copy inside it...
I am ready to finish this brief and move on, but I need to wait to see if Thompson have any more feedback.
Ten Pounds
I set myself this brief as I thought it would be a really difficult thing to do, so I could really challenge myself.
At first it was really difficult. I was trying to make a press ad that informed people of the campaign (which is difficult because of how unique the campaign is), it also had to persuade people to take part (which again is difficult because people don't like giving there money away) and it had to encourage people to look at the website. Above all, it had to be simple.
Conceptually I am very pleased with my print ad, the strapline keeps it simple, and the writing inside the letters offers more information if the viewer chooses to read it. Visually I think that it is nearly there, but needs a little more work. Some of the letters need redrawing, and the logo may need revisiting.
To help promote the campaign I have done a similar thing that Wolfs Ollins did for London 2012 and (RED). I want the campaign to be a platform for other charities and organisations to promote themselves (whilst in turn promoting the campaign).
I now need to adapt the visual style for online viewing - webiste (front end design), web banner, graphic icon for social networking sites.
Through out this brief I have tried to be quite 'pragmatic' and professional as possible, by really thinking about the audience, context, branding, where this campaign fits in regard to other companies, causes and organisations. I feel I have approached it quite professionally in this sense, however, my time management has been (as ever) terrible and am little bit behind where I would like to be with this brief.
Converge
This started off as a 'responsible' design magazine, with the idea that it would be a branding and layout exercise. I came up with the name converge, which means coming together, with a logo that consisted of 3 lines coming together.
I used the font Lublin Graph as the display font, and Avant Gard to compliment it as body copy or subheadings.
After designing a couple of covers and spreads I started feeling like I was wasting my time as I was using made up content.
After a tutorial I decided that I would get a lot more out of the brief if I treated it as just a branding brief and used the logo to brand something else. This will be much better because, although it will still be fictional, the content I will be working with will be the brand that I have created.
I think that I suitable company to brand would be an art centre.
Friday 18 April 2008
The Responsabilty of the Graphic Designer
The Responsibility of the Graphic Designer
Kyle Bibby
Trade has occurred throughout human history. As early as the Stone Age, materials such as flint and obsidian were traded and jewellery making materials have been traded in Egypt since 3000AD. Never in human history, however, has the act of exchanging one thing for another been so complex, or so fundamental in the functioning of the Western World. Capitalism is a system that relies on the exchange of capital for services or products. The ongoing search for ways of making money has had some positive effects – technological advancements in medical equipment would never have been possible without the profit incentive and better forms of transport allow trade with other countries extremely easy, raising the standard of living in the west higher than its ever been.
While (most of) the West is prosperous, roughly half of the world is living in poverty – according to The World Bank, in 2001 2.7 billion people had consumption levels of less than 2 dollars a day. Capitalism, by its very nature exploits the less privileged in order to make the privileged richer. It has created a world where the richest three people have as much wealth as the poorest 45 countries, with 8 million people dying annually because they simply cannot afford to live (The World Bank, 2008).
My personal view is that Capitalism, like many systems (such as Communism and Anarchism) could work, at least as far as providing the whole world with adequate food and shelter. However, it would need those in charge, which Marxist and Post-Marxist theory would suggest is the owners of the means of production, to act responsibly and show compassion towards the resources they were exploiting. While Marxism is a theory based on revolution, it is the aim of many Post-Marxists to, due of the decline of revolutionary potential in the West, attempt to incorporate Marxist ideas into Capitalism. For the purposes of this essay I will use the term ‘capitalism’ to refer to ‘irresponsible capitalism’
Capitalism exploits both the ‘Developed World’, by trapping people in a ‘false consciousness’, and the ‘Developing World’ by targeting countries with little regard for human rights (or desperate for income), where the labour is cheap and there is little legislation regarding the practise of factories.
The resources that are exploited are not only human. Every company exploits the Earth’s natural resources in some way. Each year 3.2 billion metric tons of Carbon Dioxide is added to the Earth’s atmosphere. Animals are also exploited horribly. Billions of animals live short lives in small cages, suffer various mutilations, before being killed for food. There are no health benefits of eating meat, meaning that the suffering of billions of animals is completely unnecessary.
While the world is, metaphorically, getting smaller, it is amazing how inward looking Western society is. Capitalism presents life as a struggle for wealth and status, and we are told (through institutions such as advertising, school, the workplace and religion) that to achieve these things we must involve ourselves in the endless buying of products that we have no real need for. Herbet Marcuse (1964, quoted in Wikipedia, 2007) argues that “advanced industrial society” makes life for its citizens “one-dimensional”, and that it is not until people are freed from the economy, and realise that they don’t have to spend their lives working for things that they don’t need, that they will be truly free.
Immanuel Kant (1785, quoted in Wikiquote, 2008) believed that freedom was directly connected with morality, and that morality was based on a rational system. Kant (1785, quoted in Seifert, 2004) tells us to “act as if the maxim of thy action were to become by thy will a universal law of nature” – to imagine, before doing anything, the outcome of everybody in the world doing the same thing. He also says that we should “act so that you treat humanity, whether in your own person or in another, always as an end and never as means only,” which has particular relevance when talking about capitalism.
I believe that it is the inability to see past “one dimensional” society, and to think rationally that restricts people from seeing the true damage that their support of the Capitalist system brings – seemingly to the everything other than the a few of the Western elite.
The documentary Black Gold, by directors Marc and Nick Francis (2006), highlights perfectly the problems that Western Capitalism causes for the Third World, as well as the general ignorance of the affluent. It follows a group of ‘Fair Trade’ Coffee growers in Ethiopia struggling to make ends meet. In one particularly poignant conversation with the Union Manager, the workers are asked how much a cup of ‘Fari Trade’ coffee (made from their beans) is sold for in America. They are shocked to hear him tell them that a cup of coffee costs around $2.90 in America, there are 80 cups worth in each sack, meaning that a sack is sold for roughly $230 dollars. The farmers claim that they are yet to be paid (the equivalent of) $0.57. Another important moment is the coverage of the World Trade Organization conference, where the developing nations have minimal representation in comparison to the EU and the US. The issues that the developing countries attempted to raise seemed to fall on deaf ears. The US Trade Representative made a speech talking about ‘can do’ countries and ‘won’t do’ countries, and how the ‘won’t do’ countries (from the developing world) ruined it for the rest. Possibly the greatest achievement of the documentary is showing the contrast between the struggling farmers and the Westerners – short clips are edited into the main narrative, these include interviews with naïve Starbucks workers, and coverage of the World Barista (or, coffee making) Championships. The film portrays brilliantly the suffering that one half of the world endures to make a few members of the other half of the world richer, as well as the way that we, as the general public, unknowingly (or just uncaringly) perpetuate the situation. For me, the title of a song by Canadian punk band Propaghandi (2001) sums up the actions of people in the West perfectly – Ordinary People Do Fucked-up Things When Fucked-Up Things Become Ordinary.
But where does the designer stand within this? It is advertising and marketing, in all of its various guises, that is the metaphorical wind in Capitalism’s sails. Design is what marketing and advertising are wrapped up in before being presented to the public. According to Rick Poyner (1999) in the article First Things First, A Brief History, “It is no exaggeration to say that designers are engaged in nothing less than the manufacture of contemporary reality.” The responsibility of the designer is a most crucial one.
It is the argument of many that religion is being replaced with consumerism – the public worship false gods, resulting in one section of society getting richer, whilst another part loses out. The ‘war on terror’ that is being waged in the name of ‘freedom’ (read ‘consumerism’) by America, with the support of the UK is not much different from the Crusades between the 11th and 17th Century which were fought in the name of Christianity. Although the War on Terror is justified with the word ‘freedom’, and the crusades were justified with the word ‘God’, there aims were both the personal benefit of the Western elite.
Similar comparisons can be made with Art. From around 300 AD until the 18th Century the main area of focus among artists and designers was the glorification of Christianity. However, today most of the ‘creative talent’ works towards promoting Capitalism (working in advertising, branding, etc.).
As Victor Papanek (1985) writes in Design for the Real World, “As socially and morally involved designers, we must address ourselves to the needs of a world with its back to the wall, while the hands on the clock point perpetually to one minute before twelve.”
Milton Glaser claims that “good design is good citizenship”, and Thomas Watson Jr. famously said, in 1950s America, that “good design is good business” (Heller and Vienne, 2003). My opinion is that good design is ‘responsible’ design. The term ‘responsible’ isn’t far removed from ‘citizenship’, however I feel the term ‘citizenship’ implies some kind of ‘loyalty’ to a country or a government, or even an idea, where as ‘responsibility’ is completely subjective (This said, Glaser’s ideas for what determined a ‘good designer’ were actually quite subjective, and based on questions, as opposed to solid answers). As designers we must decide for ourselves what we consider ‘responsible design’, and where our priorities lie as individual designers.
Glaser (2001, quoted in Heller and Vienne, 2003) made a questionnaire to determine how willing he was, as a designer, to lie. He called this ‘The Road to Hell’. It goes beyond colour, composition, type, etc., to question the ‘bigger picture.’ Here are 6 of the steps/questions:
• Designing a package to look bigger on the shelf.
• Designing a jacket for a book whose sexual content you find personally repellent.
• Designing an advertising campaign for a company with a history of known discrimination in minority hiring.
• Designing a line of t-shirts for a manufacturer that employs child labour.
• Designing a promotion for a diet product that you know doesn’t work
• Designing a brochure for an SUV that turned over frequently in emergency conditions and was known to have killed 150 people.
Fig. 1 shows stills from the recent Persil Small and Mighty advertising campaign. It shows a pop-up book describing how good for the environment it is to buy concentrated washing up liquid. Below is the copy, as narrated by the ‘cute’ sounding Welsh boy.
Because Persil Small and Mighty is concentrated it only takes half the water to make it, half the packaging to put it in, and half the lorries to deliver it. Every child has the right to a nicer world.
I think that this is a good advert in the sense that it is well made, memorable and gets the idea across, as well as creating a ‘caring’ personality for the product. However, let us forget about these qualities and attempt to analyse the ethics of this advertising campaign.
The facts are undeniable – it does have some environmental benefits to use a concentrated washing up liquid. But how much difference does it actual make? Persil claim that during the manufacturing of Small and Mighty 4.1 million litres less water (than the un-concentrated version) was used in 2007, as well as 4900 less trees. If, as they claim, the environmental impact is halved then this means that they still used 4.1 million litres of water and cut down 4900 trees to make Persil Small and Mighty in 2007. Small and Mighty is just one of Persil’s ranges that contains 3 different products – Small and Mighty Non-Biological, Small and Mighty Biological and Small and Mighty Colour. Persil also make seventeen other products, if we assume that each product uses roughly the same amount of water and trees to make (some will obviously use more, and some less) that means that in the year 2007 Persil used around 73.8 million litres of water and 88, 200 trees. This doesn’t include advertising and promotion (it would be interesting to find out how ‘green’ the advertising campaign for Small and Mighty was, Persil wouldn’t have had to have a new advertising campaign if they didn’t release a new range)
Persil are owned by Unilever - a company with 39 subsidiaries in the UK. These include brands like Cif, PG Tips, Pot Noodle, Marmite, Solero, Dove and Lynx. The later two brands, Dove and Lynx, promote two opposing values – Dove says that women should ‘Love the skin you’re in’, and be happy with not being skinny. Lynx however promotes women as objects.
Unilever have been target for animal rights protesters and are on numerous boycott lists, as well as having strong ties to cheap Third World labour. Unilever were prosecuted for polluting the Mersey in 1991, they have been fined for illegal dumping in China and have been accused by Greenpeace (2001) of dumping ‘several tonnes of highly toxic mercury waste’ in India.
If approached by Persil, and asked to promote them as a ‘green’ company, a designer would do one of three things:
• The majority would take the job and see it a good chance to make some money and improve their professional reputation.
• Some would have a problem working for a company like Unilever and wouldn’t take the offer.
• Others may also have a problem with Unilever, but take the job anyway.
As a designer/advertiser you may believe the Small and Mighty advertising campaign to be completely unethical. How can a company so massive, with such a huge ‘carbon foot print’ that exploits millions of people and animals possibly be promoted as environmentally friendly? The environmental benefits are minimal, and if they really cared about the environment then they wouldn’t have a started a company that makes chemicals. You consider it ‘responsible’ to refuse the work, as you will be helping make an immoral company more money. Instead you could work for more socially aware competitor.
However, you might take a slightly different view. There is no denying that big multi-nationals are here to stay, and ignoring them won’t make them go away. It may be considered more ‘responsible’ to work with big companies to improve things. While it is hardly honest picking out one small environmental improvement, and focusing on that, whilst ignoring the fact that the company still has a massive impact on the environment, it may be a step in the right direction. Awareness is growing amongst the general public about environmental issues and, while companies may only do it to shift more stock, it still keeps these issues at the front of peoples minds. While, at present, companies only have to make minor changes to fool people into thinking that they are ‘green’ and ‘ethical’ (or even no changes at all – HSBC now claim to be ‘green’ because you can choose whether or not you want to print a receipt at an ATM – something that you have always been able to do from any bank’s ATM), it is the nature of Capitalism that companies will try to out do each other. Meaning that companies will increasingly try to out do each other on the ‘ethical’ front, until the consumer will come to expect a company to be socially responsible.
So, what is it better to do? Try and improve things from with in big companies or refuse to work for them, and instead support smaller companies that could be potential competitors? Is it more important to focus on the outcome or the motivation of a company’s decision? Should you only work for a company that’s decisions are socially motivated, or does it not matter what the reason for the decisions are, along as the result is positive, i.e. a food company stops using eggs from battery-farmed hens and starts using free-range eggs as it will improve the company’s reputation and increase sales? Does it matter that a positive outcome came about for financial reasons? Or is it the role of the responsible designer to focus on “pursuits more worthy of our problem solving skills,” as “unprecedented environmental, social, and cultural crisis demand our attention,” as stated in First Things First Manifesto 2000 (AIGA Journal of |Graphic Design Vol.17, no. 2, 1999)? Does being responsible mean trying to do ‘good’ things, instead of just trying to de less ‘bad’ things?
As Victor Papanek (1985) says in Design for the Real World, “In an environment that is screwed up visually, physically, and chemically, the best and simplest thing that architects, industrial designers, planners, etc., could do for humanity would be to stop working entirely.” While this is true, it is not the only solution. If designers took a more active role in design, and realised just how powerful a tool it is, then things could start to change for the better. It is impossible to draw up a set of rules as to what a responsible designer should be. The responsibility of the designer is to form his own rules based on logic, compassion and education.
Bibliography
Adbusters (1999) First Things First 2000. AIGA Journal of Graphic Design, Vol. 17, no. 2.
Corporate Watch (no date) Unilever [Internet. Available from World Wide Web: [Accessed 9th April 2008]
EIA (2004) Greenhouse Gases, Climate Change, and Energy [Internet]. Available from World Wide Web: [Accessed 30th March 2008]
Francis, M. and Francis, N. (2006) Black Gold. UK, Speak-It Films.
Greenpeace (2001) Greenpeace accuses Unilever of negligence over mercury poisoning of Indian tourist resort [Internet]. Available from World Wide Web: [Accessed 5th April 2008]
Heller, S. & Vienne, V. ed. (2003) Citizen Designer. USA, Allworth Press.
Mattick, P. (1972) One Dimensional Man in Class Society [internet]. Available from World Wide Web: [Accessed 28th November 2007]
Papanek, V. (1985) Design for the Real World: Human Ecology and Social Change. UK, Thames and Hudson Ltd.
Poyner, R. (1999) First Things First, A Brief History. Adbusters, no. 27 Fall.
Propagandhi (2001) Today’s Empires, Tomorrow’s Ashes. USA, G7 Welcoming Committee Records.
Seifert, J. (2004) The Philosophical Diseases of Medicine and Their Cure [Internet]. Available from World Wide Web:
< http://books.google.co.uk> [Accessed 9th April 2008]
Wikipedia (2008) Crusades [Internet]. Available from World Wide Web: [Accessed 4th April 2008]
Wikipedia (2008) Distribution of Wealth [Internet]. Available from World Wide Web: [Accessed 1st April 2008]
Wikipedia (2008) Immanuel Kant [internet]. Available from World Wide Web:
< http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kant> [Accessed 2nd March 2008]
Wikipedia (2007) One-Dimensional Man [internet]. Available from World Wide Web: < http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/One-Dimensional_Man> [Accessed 28th November 2007]
Wikipedia (2008) Trade [Internet]. Available from World Wide Web: [Accessed 29st March 2008]
Wikipedia (2008) Western Art History [Internet]. Available from World Wide Web: [Accessed 4th April 2008]
Wikiquote (2008) Immanuel Kant [Internet]. Available from the World Wide Web: < http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Immanuel_Kant> [Accessed 9th April 2008]
Whitely, N. (1994) Design for Society. UK, Reaktion Books.
World Bank, The (2008) Understanding poverty [Internet]. Available from World Wide Web: [Accessed 1st April 2008]
Kyle Bibby
Trade has occurred throughout human history. As early as the Stone Age, materials such as flint and obsidian were traded and jewellery making materials have been traded in Egypt since 3000AD. Never in human history, however, has the act of exchanging one thing for another been so complex, or so fundamental in the functioning of the Western World. Capitalism is a system that relies on the exchange of capital for services or products. The ongoing search for ways of making money has had some positive effects – technological advancements in medical equipment would never have been possible without the profit incentive and better forms of transport allow trade with other countries extremely easy, raising the standard of living in the west higher than its ever been.
While (most of) the West is prosperous, roughly half of the world is living in poverty – according to The World Bank, in 2001 2.7 billion people had consumption levels of less than 2 dollars a day. Capitalism, by its very nature exploits the less privileged in order to make the privileged richer. It has created a world where the richest three people have as much wealth as the poorest 45 countries, with 8 million people dying annually because they simply cannot afford to live (The World Bank, 2008).
My personal view is that Capitalism, like many systems (such as Communism and Anarchism) could work, at least as far as providing the whole world with adequate food and shelter. However, it would need those in charge, which Marxist and Post-Marxist theory would suggest is the owners of the means of production, to act responsibly and show compassion towards the resources they were exploiting. While Marxism is a theory based on revolution, it is the aim of many Post-Marxists to, due of the decline of revolutionary potential in the West, attempt to incorporate Marxist ideas into Capitalism. For the purposes of this essay I will use the term ‘capitalism’ to refer to ‘irresponsible capitalism’
Capitalism exploits both the ‘Developed World’, by trapping people in a ‘false consciousness’, and the ‘Developing World’ by targeting countries with little regard for human rights (or desperate for income), where the labour is cheap and there is little legislation regarding the practise of factories.
The resources that are exploited are not only human. Every company exploits the Earth’s natural resources in some way. Each year 3.2 billion metric tons of Carbon Dioxide is added to the Earth’s atmosphere. Animals are also exploited horribly. Billions of animals live short lives in small cages, suffer various mutilations, before being killed for food. There are no health benefits of eating meat, meaning that the suffering of billions of animals is completely unnecessary.
While the world is, metaphorically, getting smaller, it is amazing how inward looking Western society is. Capitalism presents life as a struggle for wealth and status, and we are told (through institutions such as advertising, school, the workplace and religion) that to achieve these things we must involve ourselves in the endless buying of products that we have no real need for. Herbet Marcuse (1964, quoted in Wikipedia, 2007) argues that “advanced industrial society” makes life for its citizens “one-dimensional”, and that it is not until people are freed from the economy, and realise that they don’t have to spend their lives working for things that they don’t need, that they will be truly free.
Immanuel Kant (1785, quoted in Wikiquote, 2008) believed that freedom was directly connected with morality, and that morality was based on a rational system. Kant (1785, quoted in Seifert, 2004) tells us to “act as if the maxim of thy action were to become by thy will a universal law of nature” – to imagine, before doing anything, the outcome of everybody in the world doing the same thing. He also says that we should “act so that you treat humanity, whether in your own person or in another, always as an end and never as means only,” which has particular relevance when talking about capitalism.
I believe that it is the inability to see past “one dimensional” society, and to think rationally that restricts people from seeing the true damage that their support of the Capitalist system brings – seemingly to the everything other than the a few of the Western elite.
The documentary Black Gold, by directors Marc and Nick Francis (2006), highlights perfectly the problems that Western Capitalism causes for the Third World, as well as the general ignorance of the affluent. It follows a group of ‘Fair Trade’ Coffee growers in Ethiopia struggling to make ends meet. In one particularly poignant conversation with the Union Manager, the workers are asked how much a cup of ‘Fari Trade’ coffee (made from their beans) is sold for in America. They are shocked to hear him tell them that a cup of coffee costs around $2.90 in America, there are 80 cups worth in each sack, meaning that a sack is sold for roughly $230 dollars. The farmers claim that they are yet to be paid (the equivalent of) $0.57. Another important moment is the coverage of the World Trade Organization conference, where the developing nations have minimal representation in comparison to the EU and the US. The issues that the developing countries attempted to raise seemed to fall on deaf ears. The US Trade Representative made a speech talking about ‘can do’ countries and ‘won’t do’ countries, and how the ‘won’t do’ countries (from the developing world) ruined it for the rest. Possibly the greatest achievement of the documentary is showing the contrast between the struggling farmers and the Westerners – short clips are edited into the main narrative, these include interviews with naïve Starbucks workers, and coverage of the World Barista (or, coffee making) Championships. The film portrays brilliantly the suffering that one half of the world endures to make a few members of the other half of the world richer, as well as the way that we, as the general public, unknowingly (or just uncaringly) perpetuate the situation. For me, the title of a song by Canadian punk band Propaghandi (2001) sums up the actions of people in the West perfectly – Ordinary People Do Fucked-up Things When Fucked-Up Things Become Ordinary.
But where does the designer stand within this? It is advertising and marketing, in all of its various guises, that is the metaphorical wind in Capitalism’s sails. Design is what marketing and advertising are wrapped up in before being presented to the public. According to Rick Poyner (1999) in the article First Things First, A Brief History, “It is no exaggeration to say that designers are engaged in nothing less than the manufacture of contemporary reality.” The responsibility of the designer is a most crucial one.
It is the argument of many that religion is being replaced with consumerism – the public worship false gods, resulting in one section of society getting richer, whilst another part loses out. The ‘war on terror’ that is being waged in the name of ‘freedom’ (read ‘consumerism’) by America, with the support of the UK is not much different from the Crusades between the 11th and 17th Century which were fought in the name of Christianity. Although the War on Terror is justified with the word ‘freedom’, and the crusades were justified with the word ‘God’, there aims were both the personal benefit of the Western elite.
Similar comparisons can be made with Art. From around 300 AD until the 18th Century the main area of focus among artists and designers was the glorification of Christianity. However, today most of the ‘creative talent’ works towards promoting Capitalism (working in advertising, branding, etc.).
As Victor Papanek (1985) writes in Design for the Real World, “As socially and morally involved designers, we must address ourselves to the needs of a world with its back to the wall, while the hands on the clock point perpetually to one minute before twelve.”
Milton Glaser claims that “good design is good citizenship”, and Thomas Watson Jr. famously said, in 1950s America, that “good design is good business” (Heller and Vienne, 2003). My opinion is that good design is ‘responsible’ design. The term ‘responsible’ isn’t far removed from ‘citizenship’, however I feel the term ‘citizenship’ implies some kind of ‘loyalty’ to a country or a government, or even an idea, where as ‘responsibility’ is completely subjective (This said, Glaser’s ideas for what determined a ‘good designer’ were actually quite subjective, and based on questions, as opposed to solid answers). As designers we must decide for ourselves what we consider ‘responsible design’, and where our priorities lie as individual designers.
Glaser (2001, quoted in Heller and Vienne, 2003) made a questionnaire to determine how willing he was, as a designer, to lie. He called this ‘The Road to Hell’. It goes beyond colour, composition, type, etc., to question the ‘bigger picture.’ Here are 6 of the steps/questions:
• Designing a package to look bigger on the shelf.
• Designing a jacket for a book whose sexual content you find personally repellent.
• Designing an advertising campaign for a company with a history of known discrimination in minority hiring.
• Designing a line of t-shirts for a manufacturer that employs child labour.
• Designing a promotion for a diet product that you know doesn’t work
• Designing a brochure for an SUV that turned over frequently in emergency conditions and was known to have killed 150 people.
Fig. 1 shows stills from the recent Persil Small and Mighty advertising campaign. It shows a pop-up book describing how good for the environment it is to buy concentrated washing up liquid. Below is the copy, as narrated by the ‘cute’ sounding Welsh boy.
Because Persil Small and Mighty is concentrated it only takes half the water to make it, half the packaging to put it in, and half the lorries to deliver it. Every child has the right to a nicer world.
I think that this is a good advert in the sense that it is well made, memorable and gets the idea across, as well as creating a ‘caring’ personality for the product. However, let us forget about these qualities and attempt to analyse the ethics of this advertising campaign.
The facts are undeniable – it does have some environmental benefits to use a concentrated washing up liquid. But how much difference does it actual make? Persil claim that during the manufacturing of Small and Mighty 4.1 million litres less water (than the un-concentrated version) was used in 2007, as well as 4900 less trees. If, as they claim, the environmental impact is halved then this means that they still used 4.1 million litres of water and cut down 4900 trees to make Persil Small and Mighty in 2007. Small and Mighty is just one of Persil’s ranges that contains 3 different products – Small and Mighty Non-Biological, Small and Mighty Biological and Small and Mighty Colour. Persil also make seventeen other products, if we assume that each product uses roughly the same amount of water and trees to make (some will obviously use more, and some less) that means that in the year 2007 Persil used around 73.8 million litres of water and 88, 200 trees. This doesn’t include advertising and promotion (it would be interesting to find out how ‘green’ the advertising campaign for Small and Mighty was, Persil wouldn’t have had to have a new advertising campaign if they didn’t release a new range)
Persil are owned by Unilever - a company with 39 subsidiaries in the UK. These include brands like Cif, PG Tips, Pot Noodle, Marmite, Solero, Dove and Lynx. The later two brands, Dove and Lynx, promote two opposing values – Dove says that women should ‘Love the skin you’re in’, and be happy with not being skinny. Lynx however promotes women as objects.
Unilever have been target for animal rights protesters and are on numerous boycott lists, as well as having strong ties to cheap Third World labour. Unilever were prosecuted for polluting the Mersey in 1991, they have been fined for illegal dumping in China and have been accused by Greenpeace (2001) of dumping ‘several tonnes of highly toxic mercury waste’ in India.
If approached by Persil, and asked to promote them as a ‘green’ company, a designer would do one of three things:
• The majority would take the job and see it a good chance to make some money and improve their professional reputation.
• Some would have a problem working for a company like Unilever and wouldn’t take the offer.
• Others may also have a problem with Unilever, but take the job anyway.
As a designer/advertiser you may believe the Small and Mighty advertising campaign to be completely unethical. How can a company so massive, with such a huge ‘carbon foot print’ that exploits millions of people and animals possibly be promoted as environmentally friendly? The environmental benefits are minimal, and if they really cared about the environment then they wouldn’t have a started a company that makes chemicals. You consider it ‘responsible’ to refuse the work, as you will be helping make an immoral company more money. Instead you could work for more socially aware competitor.
However, you might take a slightly different view. There is no denying that big multi-nationals are here to stay, and ignoring them won’t make them go away. It may be considered more ‘responsible’ to work with big companies to improve things. While it is hardly honest picking out one small environmental improvement, and focusing on that, whilst ignoring the fact that the company still has a massive impact on the environment, it may be a step in the right direction. Awareness is growing amongst the general public about environmental issues and, while companies may only do it to shift more stock, it still keeps these issues at the front of peoples minds. While, at present, companies only have to make minor changes to fool people into thinking that they are ‘green’ and ‘ethical’ (or even no changes at all – HSBC now claim to be ‘green’ because you can choose whether or not you want to print a receipt at an ATM – something that you have always been able to do from any bank’s ATM), it is the nature of Capitalism that companies will try to out do each other. Meaning that companies will increasingly try to out do each other on the ‘ethical’ front, until the consumer will come to expect a company to be socially responsible.
So, what is it better to do? Try and improve things from with in big companies or refuse to work for them, and instead support smaller companies that could be potential competitors? Is it more important to focus on the outcome or the motivation of a company’s decision? Should you only work for a company that’s decisions are socially motivated, or does it not matter what the reason for the decisions are, along as the result is positive, i.e. a food company stops using eggs from battery-farmed hens and starts using free-range eggs as it will improve the company’s reputation and increase sales? Does it matter that a positive outcome came about for financial reasons? Or is it the role of the responsible designer to focus on “pursuits more worthy of our problem solving skills,” as “unprecedented environmental, social, and cultural crisis demand our attention,” as stated in First Things First Manifesto 2000 (AIGA Journal of |Graphic Design Vol.17, no. 2, 1999)? Does being responsible mean trying to do ‘good’ things, instead of just trying to de less ‘bad’ things?
As Victor Papanek (1985) says in Design for the Real World, “In an environment that is screwed up visually, physically, and chemically, the best and simplest thing that architects, industrial designers, planners, etc., could do for humanity would be to stop working entirely.” While this is true, it is not the only solution. If designers took a more active role in design, and realised just how powerful a tool it is, then things could start to change for the better. It is impossible to draw up a set of rules as to what a responsible designer should be. The responsibility of the designer is to form his own rules based on logic, compassion and education.
Bibliography
Adbusters (1999) First Things First 2000. AIGA Journal of Graphic Design, Vol. 17, no. 2.
Corporate Watch (no date) Unilever [Internet. Available from World Wide Web:
EIA (2004) Greenhouse Gases, Climate Change, and Energy [Internet]. Available from World Wide Web:
Francis, M. and Francis, N. (2006) Black Gold. UK, Speak-It Films.
Greenpeace (2001) Greenpeace accuses Unilever of negligence over mercury poisoning of Indian tourist resort [Internet]. Available from World Wide Web:
Heller, S. & Vienne, V. ed. (2003) Citizen Designer. USA, Allworth Press.
Mattick, P. (1972) One Dimensional Man in Class Society [internet]. Available from World Wide Web:
Papanek, V. (1985) Design for the Real World: Human Ecology and Social Change. UK, Thames and Hudson Ltd.
Poyner, R. (1999) First Things First, A Brief History. Adbusters, no. 27 Fall.
Propagandhi (2001) Today’s Empires, Tomorrow’s Ashes. USA, G7 Welcoming Committee Records.
Seifert, J. (2004) The Philosophical Diseases of Medicine and Their Cure [Internet]. Available from World Wide Web:
< http://books.google.co.uk> [Accessed 9th April 2008]
Wikipedia (2008) Crusades [Internet]. Available from World Wide Web:
Wikipedia (2008) Distribution of Wealth [Internet]. Available from World Wide Web:
Wikipedia (2008) Immanuel Kant [internet]. Available from World Wide Web:
< http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kant> [Accessed 2nd March 2008]
Wikipedia (2007) One-Dimensional Man [internet]. Available from World Wide Web: < http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/One-Dimensional_Man> [Accessed 28th November 2007]
Wikipedia (2008) Trade [Internet]. Available from World Wide Web:
Wikipedia (2008) Western Art History [Internet]. Available from World Wide Web:
Wikiquote (2008) Immanuel Kant [Internet]. Available from the World Wide Web: < http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Immanuel_Kant> [Accessed 9th April 2008]
Whitely, N. (1994) Design for Society. UK, Reaktion Books.
World Bank, The (2008) Understanding poverty [Internet]. Available from World Wide Web:
Tuesday 11 December 2007
Presentation Bibliography
BHS, Peacocks, Matalan ‘Shamed’ on Eve of Fashion Week. 2007 [online]. [Accessed on 2nd December 2007] Available from World Wide Web:
Body Shop's shares rise as its ethical rating plummets. 2006 [online]. [Accessed on 28th November 2007] Available from World WideWeb: +
Companies that Do/Don’t Test on Animals. No date given [online]. [Accessed on 1st December 2007] Available from World Wide Web: <>
Gerrish, B. A. (1997) Feuerbach’s Religious Illusion [online]. [Accessed 28th November 2007] Available World Wide Web:
Klimowski, A. and Want, C. (1999) Introducing Kant. Cambridge: Icon Books Ltd
Knabb, K. (2002) Society of the Spectacle (The new translation of the book by Guy Debord)[online]. [Accessed 30th November 2007] Available from World Wide Web:
Marx, K. ([1867] 1999) Capital. New York: Oxford University Press
Mattick, P. (1972) One Dimensional Man in Class Society [online]. [Accessed 28th November 2007] Available from World Wide Web:
Wikipedia (2007) One-Dimensional Man [online]. [Accessed 28th November 2007] Available from World Wide Web: <>
Wikipedia (2007) Commodity Fetishism [online]. [Accessed 28th November 2007] Available from World Wide Web: <>
Wikipedia (2007) György Lukács [online]. [Accessed 28th November 2007] Available from World Wide Web:
Wikipedia (2007) Jean Baudillard [online]. [Accessed 1st December 2007] Available from World Wide Web: <>
Woodfin, R. and Zarate, O. (2004) Introducing Marxism. UK: Icon Books Ltd.
Body Shop's shares rise as its ethical rating plummets. 2006 [online]. [Accessed on 28th November 2007] Available from World WideWeb: +
Companies that Do/Don’t Test on Animals. No date given [online]. [Accessed on 1st December 2007] Available from World Wide Web: <>
Gerrish, B. A. (1997) Feuerbach’s Religious Illusion [online]. [Accessed 28th November 2007] Available World Wide Web:
Klimowski, A. and Want, C. (1999) Introducing Kant. Cambridge: Icon Books Ltd
Knabb, K. (2002) Society of the Spectacle (The new translation of the book by Guy Debord)[online]. [Accessed 30th November 2007] Available from World Wide Web:
Marx, K. ([1867] 1999) Capital. New York: Oxford University Press
Mattick, P. (1972) One Dimensional Man in Class Society [online]. [Accessed 28th November 2007] Available from World Wide Web:
Wikipedia (2007) One-Dimensional Man [online]. [Accessed 28th November 2007] Available from World Wide Web: <>
Wikipedia (2007) Commodity Fetishism [online]. [Accessed 28th November 2007] Available from World Wide Web: <>
Wikipedia (2007) György Lukács [online]. [Accessed 28th November 2007] Available from World Wide Web:
Wikipedia (2007) Jean Baudillard [online]. [Accessed 1st December 2007] Available from World Wide Web: <>
Woodfin, R. and Zarate, O. (2004) Introducing Marxism. UK: Icon Books Ltd.
Presentation
The Fetishism of Commodities and the secret thereof - Karl Marx
I will be talking about Karl Marx’s text ‘The Fetishism of Commodities and the secret thereof,’ from the book ‘Capital’.
Karl Marx was born in Germany in 1818 and together with Friedrich Engels, established Marxism.
Marxism is a theory initially inspired by Hegel who believed that the world was constructed by people’s ideas. Marx took this theory and turned it around, saying instead, that people were a result of their environment.
Marxist theory is based on revolution. Marx believed that the current capitalist system would come to its destruction because the methods of production would gradually lead to an extreme concentration of wealth. The bourgeoisies would shrink and the proletariat would grow, until the underclass had no choice but to revolt against their exploiters.
The Fetishism of Commodities and the Secret Thereof.
In this section of Capital, Marx discusses the irrational way that people in the west view products. To give an example from contemporary culture, the reason why, say, a Gucci handbag has the human characteristics of being glamorous and sophisticated, despite the fact that it is just pieces of material stitches together with the purpose of making carrying things easier, and why the exchange value (or the price) reflects this irrational personality, instead of the actual materials and labour time that went into making it.
The idea of fetish was originally used by Emmanuel Kant to describe the way that people project themselves onto religion. Marx applied this theory to commodity.
Capitalist society is based on the production and trade of goods. Meaning that the relationships that people have with each other are based in the workplace, “…from the moment that men in anyway work for one another, their labour assumes a social form.” Because people’s social relationships are based on the production of goods, Marx argues that these social relationships are projected onto these goods, turning them into commodities. He also says that “the value –relation between the products of labour which stamps them as commodities, have absolutely no connexion with their physical properties.” You pay for the personality of the product, not the actual product. *
Because all human interaction revolves around labour, and because objects have a personality, Marx states that the roles of people and objects has been changed- there are “material relations between persons, and social relations between things.” And that it is the exchange values of things rather than the value of manufacturing it (or even the use value) “that converts every product into a social hieroglyphs.”
In conclusion Marx looks back to primitive cultures that valued an object only by how useful it was and writes “ The life process of society, which is based on the process of material production, does not strip off its mystical veil until it is treated as production by freely associated men, and is consciously regulated by them in accordance with a settled plan.”
Marxism in the modern world.
Times have changed a great deal since Marx. There wasn’t the revolution that Marx predicted. According to Herbert Marcuse, in ‘1 dimensional man’, this is because “advanced industrial society” creates false needs, integrating people into the system of production and consumption. Because of the mass media and advertising, people believe that they must own lots of pointless possessions. By working and buying these things people believe they are bettering themselves and so are happy being exploited.
Although the rich keep getting richer and the poor keep getting poorer, proletariat and bourgeoisies no longer exist as two separate classes. Workers get paid better, have the chance of promotion, and can own shares to receive portions of companies profit. The working class have been successfully integrated into capitalist society. There is no longer revolutionary potential in the west.
Marx’s ideas about commodity fetish are, however, still extremely valid. Georg Lukacs expands on Marx’s ideas when he talks about ‘reification’, which is essentially the same as fetish but with subtle differences.
Reification
The consideration of an abstraction or an object as if it had human or living existence and abilities
Separating something from it’s original context and placing it in another context – giving it powers and attributes that in truth it doesn’t have.
Objects are turned into subject and subjects are turned into objects.
People are just blank canvasses, and possessions paint our characteristics. With out possessions we are nobody.
We are judged on the labels we wear, the car we drive and the shops we shop in. We can change our image, and therefore their personality, on a daily basis.
A man they could walk into high street clothing store and decide that they want to be ‘punk.’ They would buy a t-shirt made from distressed fabric with messy homemade style graphics, a pair of tight jeans and a studded belt. Neither the man, nor the shop, are concerned with what punk actually was, or is, they are only concerned with it on an aesthetic level.
According to Guy Debord, “In societies dominated by modern conditions of production, life is presented as an immense accumulation of spectacles. Everything that was directly lived has receded into a representation.”
A good example to look at when discussing commodity fetish, or reification is Adidas. Adidas has got practically all areas covered when it comes to the footwear and clothing markets (as well as toiletries, electricals, etc). Adidas is an extremely successful brand because of its image. Adidas is more an idea than a pair of shoes. Its this reason why Adidas can put a their logo on anything and people will buy it because they recognise it as Adidas. One of the most interesting things about Adidas is that they have a different image in different markets. Different Adidas products connote different characteristics.
Adidas can even manage to sell t-shirts, like this one, with pictures of trainers on them.
Looking at it objectively it is completely absurd, but the person that is buying the t-shirt doesn’t see it as just a picture of a shoe, they see the idea that the shoe has come to represent.
Brands and names are used to categorise people into target markets, most decisions we make have been reduced to consumer decisions, and due to globalisation, are completely pointless. Whatever you believe in, whatever your tastes are or whatever moral code you live by, you are just a member of a target market, even if you are anti-capitalist, the capitalists have an option for you. This is because these are purely aesthetic options. For example, you decide that you’re opposed to the increasingly intensive production systems of a capitalist culture. You decide to buy Green and Blacks chocolate because it is Fair Trade, and you buy your toiletries from The Body Shop, because they don’t test on animals. You’ve spent a bit over the odds, but you know it’s worth it for a clear conscience. The thing you don’t realise is that Green and Blacks is owned by Cadbury, a company that in the past has been accused of using sweat shop labour, and The Body Shop is owned by L’Oreal, which is a massive company that tests on animals. L’Oreal also own 26% of Nestle, who in turn own a whole host of other brands. The majority of the market place is owned by just a few brands, effectively making consumer decisions pointless
Conclusion
I would like to begin my conclusion with a quote from Ludwig Feuerbach.
“But for the present age, which prefers the sign to the thing signified, the copy to the original, representation to reality, appearance to essence…truth is considered profane and only illusion is sacred. Sacredness is in fact held to be enhanced, in proportion as truth decreases and illusion increases, so that the highest degree of illusion comes to be the highest degree of sacredness.”
However, most people aren’t idiots, they know they are being conned, they know they don’t really need to buy yet another pair of shoes, but hey its doing no harm, and they are really nice shoes.
The majority of people in the west have enough money to live in relative comfort. To realise the true harm that capitalism does we have too look further than the people of the west.
The idea of their being two distinct classes, the bourgeoisie and the proletariat is still there. The people in the west, despite their differences, are the bourgeoisie. It’s the sweat shop workers of the third world, the millions of animals kept in barren cages and polluted natural world that is the modern proletariat.
Modern production methods mean that every time you buy a pair of jeans, chances are they will have been made in a sweatshop where people work 15 hours a day and still can’t afford to feed their families. Whenever you buy food with egg in it, it will have come from a hen that lives in a cage the size of a piece of A4 paper, and had it’s beak cut of without anaesthetic, and everything you buy will have someway polluted the environment.
I will be talking about Karl Marx’s text ‘The Fetishism of Commodities and the secret thereof,’ from the book ‘Capital’.
Karl Marx was born in Germany in 1818 and together with Friedrich Engels, established Marxism.
Marxism is a theory initially inspired by Hegel who believed that the world was constructed by people’s ideas. Marx took this theory and turned it around, saying instead, that people were a result of their environment.
Marxist theory is based on revolution. Marx believed that the current capitalist system would come to its destruction because the methods of production would gradually lead to an extreme concentration of wealth. The bourgeoisies would shrink and the proletariat would grow, until the underclass had no choice but to revolt against their exploiters.
The Fetishism of Commodities and the Secret Thereof.
In this section of Capital, Marx discusses the irrational way that people in the west view products. To give an example from contemporary culture, the reason why, say, a Gucci handbag has the human characteristics of being glamorous and sophisticated, despite the fact that it is just pieces of material stitches together with the purpose of making carrying things easier, and why the exchange value (or the price) reflects this irrational personality, instead of the actual materials and labour time that went into making it.
The idea of fetish was originally used by Emmanuel Kant to describe the way that people project themselves onto religion. Marx applied this theory to commodity.
Capitalist society is based on the production and trade of goods. Meaning that the relationships that people have with each other are based in the workplace, “…from the moment that men in anyway work for one another, their labour assumes a social form.” Because people’s social relationships are based on the production of goods, Marx argues that these social relationships are projected onto these goods, turning them into commodities. He also says that “the value –relation between the products of labour which stamps them as commodities, have absolutely no connexion with their physical properties.” You pay for the personality of the product, not the actual product. *
Because all human interaction revolves around labour, and because objects have a personality, Marx states that the roles of people and objects has been changed- there are “material relations between persons, and social relations between things.” And that it is the exchange values of things rather than the value of manufacturing it (or even the use value) “that converts every product into a social hieroglyphs.”
In conclusion Marx looks back to primitive cultures that valued an object only by how useful it was and writes “ The life process of society, which is based on the process of material production, does not strip off its mystical veil until it is treated as production by freely associated men, and is consciously regulated by them in accordance with a settled plan.”
Marxism in the modern world.
Times have changed a great deal since Marx. There wasn’t the revolution that Marx predicted. According to Herbert Marcuse, in ‘1 dimensional man’, this is because “advanced industrial society” creates false needs, integrating people into the system of production and consumption. Because of the mass media and advertising, people believe that they must own lots of pointless possessions. By working and buying these things people believe they are bettering themselves and so are happy being exploited.
Although the rich keep getting richer and the poor keep getting poorer, proletariat and bourgeoisies no longer exist as two separate classes. Workers get paid better, have the chance of promotion, and can own shares to receive portions of companies profit. The working class have been successfully integrated into capitalist society. There is no longer revolutionary potential in the west.
Marx’s ideas about commodity fetish are, however, still extremely valid. Georg Lukacs expands on Marx’s ideas when he talks about ‘reification’, which is essentially the same as fetish but with subtle differences.
Reification
The consideration of an abstraction or an object as if it had human or living existence and abilities
Separating something from it’s original context and placing it in another context – giving it powers and attributes that in truth it doesn’t have.
Objects are turned into subject and subjects are turned into objects.
People are just blank canvasses, and possessions paint our characteristics. With out possessions we are nobody.
We are judged on the labels we wear, the car we drive and the shops we shop in. We can change our image, and therefore their personality, on a daily basis.
A man they could walk into high street clothing store and decide that they want to be ‘punk.’ They would buy a t-shirt made from distressed fabric with messy homemade style graphics, a pair of tight jeans and a studded belt. Neither the man, nor the shop, are concerned with what punk actually was, or is, they are only concerned with it on an aesthetic level.
According to Guy Debord, “In societies dominated by modern conditions of production, life is presented as an immense accumulation of spectacles. Everything that was directly lived has receded into a representation.”
A good example to look at when discussing commodity fetish, or reification is Adidas. Adidas has got practically all areas covered when it comes to the footwear and clothing markets (as well as toiletries, electricals, etc). Adidas is an extremely successful brand because of its image. Adidas is more an idea than a pair of shoes. Its this reason why Adidas can put a their logo on anything and people will buy it because they recognise it as Adidas. One of the most interesting things about Adidas is that they have a different image in different markets. Different Adidas products connote different characteristics.
Adidas can even manage to sell t-shirts, like this one, with pictures of trainers on them.
Looking at it objectively it is completely absurd, but the person that is buying the t-shirt doesn’t see it as just a picture of a shoe, they see the idea that the shoe has come to represent.
Brands and names are used to categorise people into target markets, most decisions we make have been reduced to consumer decisions, and due to globalisation, are completely pointless. Whatever you believe in, whatever your tastes are or whatever moral code you live by, you are just a member of a target market, even if you are anti-capitalist, the capitalists have an option for you. This is because these are purely aesthetic options. For example, you decide that you’re opposed to the increasingly intensive production systems of a capitalist culture. You decide to buy Green and Blacks chocolate because it is Fair Trade, and you buy your toiletries from The Body Shop, because they don’t test on animals. You’ve spent a bit over the odds, but you know it’s worth it for a clear conscience. The thing you don’t realise is that Green and Blacks is owned by Cadbury, a company that in the past has been accused of using sweat shop labour, and The Body Shop is owned by L’Oreal, which is a massive company that tests on animals. L’Oreal also own 26% of Nestle, who in turn own a whole host of other brands. The majority of the market place is owned by just a few brands, effectively making consumer decisions pointless
Conclusion
I would like to begin my conclusion with a quote from Ludwig Feuerbach.
“But for the present age, which prefers the sign to the thing signified, the copy to the original, representation to reality, appearance to essence…truth is considered profane and only illusion is sacred. Sacredness is in fact held to be enhanced, in proportion as truth decreases and illusion increases, so that the highest degree of illusion comes to be the highest degree of sacredness.”
However, most people aren’t idiots, they know they are being conned, they know they don’t really need to buy yet another pair of shoes, but hey its doing no harm, and they are really nice shoes.
The majority of people in the west have enough money to live in relative comfort. To realise the true harm that capitalism does we have too look further than the people of the west.
The idea of their being two distinct classes, the bourgeoisie and the proletariat is still there. The people in the west, despite their differences, are the bourgeoisie. It’s the sweat shop workers of the third world, the millions of animals kept in barren cages and polluted natural world that is the modern proletariat.
Modern production methods mean that every time you buy a pair of jeans, chances are they will have been made in a sweatshop where people work 15 hours a day and still can’t afford to feed their families. Whenever you buy food with egg in it, it will have come from a hen that lives in a cage the size of a piece of A4 paper, and had it’s beak cut of without anaesthetic, and everything you buy will have someway polluted the environment.
First Version of Presentation
The Fetishism of Commodities and the secret thereof - Karl Marx
I will be talking about Karl Marx’s text ‘The Fetishism of Commodities and the secret thereof,’ from the book ‘Capital’.
Karl Marx was born in Germany in 1818 and together with Friedrich Engels, established Marxism. Marxism can be summed up in three main points:
A philosophical basis which derives much from Hegel but which neatly inverts the central idea of the Hegelian perspective.
GWF Hegel thought that the only things that are actually real “are ideas”. He believed in an ‘Absolute’ or a perfect cosmic plan, and that history is this plan “unfolding itself” – getting ever nearer to the perfect idea. He claimed that “whatever is rational is real, and whatever is real is rational.” There is a cosmic principle of rationality and whatever happens is part of the cosmic plan and so is justifiable. He is thought to be responsible for originating both Fascism and communism.
Hegel believed that we can only learn from the past - “The owl of Minerva (wisdom) spreads its wings only with the falling of the light.” This Marx disagreed on, he believed that philosophers should not reflect on the world but try to change it.
The main thing that Marx took from Hegel is the idea of ‘the dialectic’, or how ideas “fold out”. Hegel observed that throughout history there were ideas or, thesis, and that there were conflicting ideas, or antithesis. Parts of both the thesis and the antithesis will be combined creating the synthesis, and so ideas progress. Flaws in the sythesis will slowly become apparent, and an antithesis will be constructed, and again a synthesis will arrive combining elements of the thesis and antithesis, and so on and so on.
Hegels ‘dialectic’ was based on the idea that people create their surroundings, that the world was nothing but the ideas of people, Marx completely flips this on its head by saying our ideas do not make the world, but instead the world makes our ideas
A systematic and complex set of economic and political theories which follow from the philosophical position. The most important of these being the Theory of Surplus Value and the Labour Theory of Value.
These theories explore how capitalists, or the owners of the means of production (the factories), attempt to make money:
Everything has a value. Its value consists of the cost of the raw materials, the tools and machines needed to turn the raw materials into a product, and the labour time it takes to make the product. This leaves no room for profit. How can he make money and undercut his competitors when they all have to pay for raw materials, tools and labour?
Raw materials cost a set price, as do tools and machinery. However, if he pays the workers less than their work is worth he can lower the production costs and so make money. And so the working man – the proletariat- is exploited by the factory owners – the bourgeois.
A theory of revolution
Wages of the workers will continue to decrease as business competitors try to sell their products for less and less. Richer companies will be able to afford new technology meaning that work is cheaper and more efficient, and also that fewer workers are needed (and so money is saved on wages). Smaller companies will slowly crumble and their owners will end up members of the proletariat, as larger companies grow.
The proletariat will continue to grow as the bourgeois shrink, as wealth is concentrated on just a small percentage of the population. This will continue to happen, the underclass will grow to such a proportion that revolution is inevitable, and necessary.
The Fetishism of Commodities and the Secret Thereof.
In the section of Capital, The Fetishism of Commodities and the Secret Thereof he discusses “the reason why the products of labour become commodities”, or the reason why object have a personality that has “absolutely no connexion with their physical properties.” To give an example from contemporary culture, the reason why, say, a Gucci handbag has the human characteristics of being glamorous and sophisticated, despite the fact that it is just pieces of material stitches together with the purpose of making carrying things easier, and why the exchange value (or the price) reflects this irrational personality, instead of the actual materials and labour time that went into making it.
The original idea of fetish was originally used by Emmanuel Kant to describe the way that people project themselves onto religion. Marx applied this theory to commodity.
Capitalist society is based on the production and trade of goods. Meaning that the relationships that people have with each other are based on the production and trade of goods. “…from the moment that men in anyway work for one another, their labour assumes a social form.” Because people’s social relationships are based on the production of goods, Marx argues that these social relationships are projected onto the goods, turning it into commodities.
Marx says the way that objects appear to have a personality as “the same way that light from an object is perceived by us not as the subjective excitation of our optic nerve, but as the objective form of something outside the eye its self.” Although there is a direct relation between the things in front of us and the images we see, Marx says that “the value –relation between the products of labour which stamps them as commodities, have absolutely no connexion with their physical properties.”
Because all human interaction revolves around labour, and because objects have a personality, Marx states that the roles of people and objects has been changed- there are “material relations between persons, and social relations between things.” This destruction of natural social relationships between people is what restricts people from feeling truly happy; it alienates people.
Marx says that it is the exchange values of things rather than the value of manufacturing it (or even the use value) “that converts every product into a social hieroglyphs.” Different products stand for different things, and say different things about their owner. This character that is added when a product becomes a commodity “obtains fixity only by reason of their acting and reacting upon each other as quantities of value”. Marx blames the way that the fruit of people’s labour are traded in capitalism, i.e. with money, for the commoditisation of products – “It was the expression of all commodities in money,” he says, “that led to the establishment of their characters as values.”
He then goes on to talk about Robinson Crusoe, as well as primitive cultures, saying that if we were more like them, the fetish of commodities wouldn’t exist. All labour would be for the labourers benefit, and items would be judged only on their use-value.
In conclusion Marx writes “ The life process of society, which is based on the process of material production, does not strip off its mystical veil until it is treated as production by freely associated men, and is consciously regulated by them in accordance with a settled plan.”
Marxism in the modern world.
Times have changed a great deal since Marx. There wasn’t the revolution that Marx expected. According to Herbert Marcuse, in ‘1 dimensional man’, this is because “advanced industrial society” creates false needs, integrating people into the system of production and consumption. Because of the mass media and advertising, people believe that they must own lots of pointless possessions. This false consciousness blinds people to the fact threat they are being exploited. Because people are working hard (to make other people rich) they can afford all of these wonderful possessions. By working and buying possessions people believe they are bettering themselves and are so happy being exploited.
Although the rich keep getting richer and the poor keep getting poorer, there is more of a sliding scale. There is no longer the proletariat and bourgeoisies as two separate classes, workers get paid better, have the chance of promotion, and can own shares to receive portions of companies profit. The working class have been successfully integrated into capitalist society. There is no longer a need for revolution in the west.
Marxist and socialist thought is still alive, however the goal tends to be integrating Marxist thought into capitalism, to try and improve the current society instead of overthrowing it.
However, what Marx says about the fetish of commodities is still as valid, if not more valid, in the 21st century. Georg Lukacs expands on Marx’s ideas when he talks about ‘reification’. Reification is essentially the same as fetish but with subtle differences.
Reification
The consideration of an abstraction or an object as if it had human or living existence and abilities
Separating something from it’s original context and placing it in another context – giving it powers and attributes that in truth it doesn’t have.
Marx believed that this happened due to the social form of the labour that went into making the product. However, I believe that Lukacs is saying that the personality of the commodity is something that is purposefully added via advertising and marketing.
Jean Boudrillard says something similar, that consumption is more important than production. The artificial need for a product has to be established, and then good must be produced to fill those needs.
Objects are turned into subject and subjects are turned into objects.
People are just blank canvasses, and possessions paint our characteristics. With out possessions we are nobody.
People are judged by what labels they wear, what car they drive and what shops they shop in. People can also change they’re image, and therefore their personality, on a daily basis. A man they could walk into high street clothing store and decide that they want to be ‘punk.’ They would buy a t-shirt made from distressed fabric with messy homemade style graphics, a pair of tight jeans and a studded belt. Styles often originate for a reason. Punk was a reaction to society at the time. It was the working class showing their anger towards the upper class. The homemade, scruffy clothing reflected this, it was the opposite of the smart suits of the upper and middle classes. Today clothing shops will sell both suits and aesthetically ‘punk’ clothing, yet it means nothing. According to Guy Debord, “In societies dominated by modern conditions of production, life is presented as an immense accumulation of spectacles. Everything that was directly lived has receded into a representation.” He then goes on to say, “The images detached from every aspect of life merge into a common stream in which the unity of that life can no longer be recovered. Fragmented views of reality regroup themselves into a new unity as a separate pseudo world that can only be looked at. The specialization of images of the world evolves into a world evolves into a world of autonomized images where even the deceivers are deceived.”
A good example to look at when discussing commodity fetish, or reification is Nike. Nike have got practically all areas covered when it comes to the footwear and clothing markets (as well as toiletries, electricals, etc). Nike is an extremely successful brand because of its image. Nike is more an idea than a pair of shoes. Its this reason why you can put a ‘Nike Tick’ on anything and people will buy it because they recognize it as Nike, and the connotations that are associated by the Nike brand are added to, say, cheap mass produced watch. One of the most interesting things about Nike is that they have different images in different markets. Different Nike products connote different characteristics. It is this reason why Nike sell t-shirts with a picture of a trainer on it. Looking at it objectively it is completely absurd, but to the person that is buying the t-shirt doesn’t see it as just a shoe, they see the idea that the shoe has come to represent.
Brands and names are used to categorise people into target markets, most decisions we make have been reduced to consumer decisions, and because of globalisation, are completely pointless. Whatever you believe in, whatever your tastes are or whatever moral code you live by, you are just a member of a target market, even if you are anti-capitalist, the capitalists have an option for you. This is because these are purely aesthetic options. For example, you decide that you’re opposed to the increasingly intensive production systems of a capitalist culture. You decide to buy your toiletries from The Body Shop, because they don’t test on animals, and you buy Green and Blacks chocolate because it is Fair Trade. You’ve spent a bit over the odds, but you know its worth it for a clear conscience. The thing you don’t realise is that Green and Blacks is owned by Cadbury, a company that in the past has been accused of using sweat shop labour. The Body Shop is owned by L’Oreal, a massive company that tests on animals and has been accused of “including harmful pollutants and worrying chemicals in its cosmetics.” L’Oreal also own 26% of Nestle, a company that owns a whole host of other companies. The majority of the market place is owned by just a few brands, effectively making consumer decisions pointless as peoples money is all going to just a few people.
It is similar with the media, which is owned by just a few people, meaning that decisions between whether to buy, say The Sun, or The Times, which are viewed as 2 completely different newspapers, as good as pointless. They are both owned, as are various other companies (like Sky, Fox and Myspace), by News Corporation. Although the content of the two newspapers varies, the underlying political viewpoint and choice of which stories to cover and what slant to put on them is ultimately made by one man.
Conclusion
To begin my conclusion I would like to quote Ludwig Feuerbach, who helped inspire both Marx and Hegel:
“But for the present age, which prefers the sign to the thing signified, the copy to the original, representation to reality, appearance to essence…truth is considered profane and only illusion is sacred. Sacredness is in fact held to be enhanced, in proportion as truth decreases and illusion increases, so that the highest degree of illusion comes to be the highest degree of sacredness.”
The majority of people are living in a world where they are being constantly ripped off for the latest product, as they feel it will enhance them in some way. We are living in a dream world where our possessions speak for us. This false consciousness is manufactured by an elite few, who use it to make themselves extremely rich.
The truth is that most people aren’t idiots, they know they are being conned, they know they don’t really need to buy yet another pair of shoes, but hey its doing no harm, we have all got enough money to eat, and they are really nice shoes.
It is true, despite extreme differences in wealth; the majority of people in the west have enough money to live in relative comfort. To realise the true harm that capitalism does we have too look further than the people of the west.
On a national scale the world is completely different from the time that Marx lived in, however on an international scale we can see similarities. The idea of their being two distinct classes, the bourgeoisie and the proletariat is still there. The people in the west, despite their differences, are the new bourgeois. The people working for a few pennies a day in developing countries, the millions of animals being kept in cages so small they cant move and the natural world is now the proletariat class.
Modern production methods mean that every time you buy a pair of jeans, chances are they will have been made in a sweatshop where people work 15 hours a day and still can’t afford to feed their families. Whenever you buy food with egg in it, it will have come from a hen that lives in a cage the size of a piece of A4 paper, and had it’s beak cut of without anesthetic, and everything you buy will have someway polluted the environment.
We are quite happy to destroy everything around us so long as we can consume constantly and unnecessarily.
I will be talking about Karl Marx’s text ‘The Fetishism of Commodities and the secret thereof,’ from the book ‘Capital’.
Karl Marx was born in Germany in 1818 and together with Friedrich Engels, established Marxism. Marxism can be summed up in three main points:
A philosophical basis which derives much from Hegel but which neatly inverts the central idea of the Hegelian perspective.
GWF Hegel thought that the only things that are actually real “are ideas”. He believed in an ‘Absolute’ or a perfect cosmic plan, and that history is this plan “unfolding itself” – getting ever nearer to the perfect idea. He claimed that “whatever is rational is real, and whatever is real is rational.” There is a cosmic principle of rationality and whatever happens is part of the cosmic plan and so is justifiable. He is thought to be responsible for originating both Fascism and communism.
Hegel believed that we can only learn from the past - “The owl of Minerva (wisdom) spreads its wings only with the falling of the light.” This Marx disagreed on, he believed that philosophers should not reflect on the world but try to change it.
The main thing that Marx took from Hegel is the idea of ‘the dialectic’, or how ideas “fold out”. Hegel observed that throughout history there were ideas or, thesis, and that there were conflicting ideas, or antithesis. Parts of both the thesis and the antithesis will be combined creating the synthesis, and so ideas progress. Flaws in the sythesis will slowly become apparent, and an antithesis will be constructed, and again a synthesis will arrive combining elements of the thesis and antithesis, and so on and so on.
Hegels ‘dialectic’ was based on the idea that people create their surroundings, that the world was nothing but the ideas of people, Marx completely flips this on its head by saying our ideas do not make the world, but instead the world makes our ideas
A systematic and complex set of economic and political theories which follow from the philosophical position. The most important of these being the Theory of Surplus Value and the Labour Theory of Value.
These theories explore how capitalists, or the owners of the means of production (the factories), attempt to make money:
Everything has a value. Its value consists of the cost of the raw materials, the tools and machines needed to turn the raw materials into a product, and the labour time it takes to make the product. This leaves no room for profit. How can he make money and undercut his competitors when they all have to pay for raw materials, tools and labour?
Raw materials cost a set price, as do tools and machinery. However, if he pays the workers less than their work is worth he can lower the production costs and so make money. And so the working man – the proletariat- is exploited by the factory owners – the bourgeois.
A theory of revolution
Wages of the workers will continue to decrease as business competitors try to sell their products for less and less. Richer companies will be able to afford new technology meaning that work is cheaper and more efficient, and also that fewer workers are needed (and so money is saved on wages). Smaller companies will slowly crumble and their owners will end up members of the proletariat, as larger companies grow.
The proletariat will continue to grow as the bourgeois shrink, as wealth is concentrated on just a small percentage of the population. This will continue to happen, the underclass will grow to such a proportion that revolution is inevitable, and necessary.
The Fetishism of Commodities and the Secret Thereof.
In the section of Capital, The Fetishism of Commodities and the Secret Thereof he discusses “the reason why the products of labour become commodities”, or the reason why object have a personality that has “absolutely no connexion with their physical properties.” To give an example from contemporary culture, the reason why, say, a Gucci handbag has the human characteristics of being glamorous and sophisticated, despite the fact that it is just pieces of material stitches together with the purpose of making carrying things easier, and why the exchange value (or the price) reflects this irrational personality, instead of the actual materials and labour time that went into making it.
The original idea of fetish was originally used by Emmanuel Kant to describe the way that people project themselves onto religion. Marx applied this theory to commodity.
Capitalist society is based on the production and trade of goods. Meaning that the relationships that people have with each other are based on the production and trade of goods. “…from the moment that men in anyway work for one another, their labour assumes a social form.” Because people’s social relationships are based on the production of goods, Marx argues that these social relationships are projected onto the goods, turning it into commodities.
Marx says the way that objects appear to have a personality as “the same way that light from an object is perceived by us not as the subjective excitation of our optic nerve, but as the objective form of something outside the eye its self.” Although there is a direct relation between the things in front of us and the images we see, Marx says that “the value –relation between the products of labour which stamps them as commodities, have absolutely no connexion with their physical properties.”
Because all human interaction revolves around labour, and because objects have a personality, Marx states that the roles of people and objects has been changed- there are “material relations between persons, and social relations between things.” This destruction of natural social relationships between people is what restricts people from feeling truly happy; it alienates people.
Marx says that it is the exchange values of things rather than the value of manufacturing it (or even the use value) “that converts every product into a social hieroglyphs.” Different products stand for different things, and say different things about their owner. This character that is added when a product becomes a commodity “obtains fixity only by reason of their acting and reacting upon each other as quantities of value”. Marx blames the way that the fruit of people’s labour are traded in capitalism, i.e. with money, for the commoditisation of products – “It was the expression of all commodities in money,” he says, “that led to the establishment of their characters as values.”
He then goes on to talk about Robinson Crusoe, as well as primitive cultures, saying that if we were more like them, the fetish of commodities wouldn’t exist. All labour would be for the labourers benefit, and items would be judged only on their use-value.
In conclusion Marx writes “ The life process of society, which is based on the process of material production, does not strip off its mystical veil until it is treated as production by freely associated men, and is consciously regulated by them in accordance with a settled plan.”
Marxism in the modern world.
Times have changed a great deal since Marx. There wasn’t the revolution that Marx expected. According to Herbert Marcuse, in ‘1 dimensional man’, this is because “advanced industrial society” creates false needs, integrating people into the system of production and consumption. Because of the mass media and advertising, people believe that they must own lots of pointless possessions. This false consciousness blinds people to the fact threat they are being exploited. Because people are working hard (to make other people rich) they can afford all of these wonderful possessions. By working and buying possessions people believe they are bettering themselves and are so happy being exploited.
Although the rich keep getting richer and the poor keep getting poorer, there is more of a sliding scale. There is no longer the proletariat and bourgeoisies as two separate classes, workers get paid better, have the chance of promotion, and can own shares to receive portions of companies profit. The working class have been successfully integrated into capitalist society. There is no longer a need for revolution in the west.
Marxist and socialist thought is still alive, however the goal tends to be integrating Marxist thought into capitalism, to try and improve the current society instead of overthrowing it.
However, what Marx says about the fetish of commodities is still as valid, if not more valid, in the 21st century. Georg Lukacs expands on Marx’s ideas when he talks about ‘reification’. Reification is essentially the same as fetish but with subtle differences.
Reification
The consideration of an abstraction or an object as if it had human or living existence and abilities
Separating something from it’s original context and placing it in another context – giving it powers and attributes that in truth it doesn’t have.
Marx believed that this happened due to the social form of the labour that went into making the product. However, I believe that Lukacs is saying that the personality of the commodity is something that is purposefully added via advertising and marketing.
Jean Boudrillard says something similar, that consumption is more important than production. The artificial need for a product has to be established, and then good must be produced to fill those needs.
Objects are turned into subject and subjects are turned into objects.
People are just blank canvasses, and possessions paint our characteristics. With out possessions we are nobody.
People are judged by what labels they wear, what car they drive and what shops they shop in. People can also change they’re image, and therefore their personality, on a daily basis. A man they could walk into high street clothing store and decide that they want to be ‘punk.’ They would buy a t-shirt made from distressed fabric with messy homemade style graphics, a pair of tight jeans and a studded belt. Styles often originate for a reason. Punk was a reaction to society at the time. It was the working class showing their anger towards the upper class. The homemade, scruffy clothing reflected this, it was the opposite of the smart suits of the upper and middle classes. Today clothing shops will sell both suits and aesthetically ‘punk’ clothing, yet it means nothing. According to Guy Debord, “In societies dominated by modern conditions of production, life is presented as an immense accumulation of spectacles. Everything that was directly lived has receded into a representation.” He then goes on to say, “The images detached from every aspect of life merge into a common stream in which the unity of that life can no longer be recovered. Fragmented views of reality regroup themselves into a new unity as a separate pseudo world that can only be looked at. The specialization of images of the world evolves into a world evolves into a world of autonomized images where even the deceivers are deceived.”
A good example to look at when discussing commodity fetish, or reification is Nike. Nike have got practically all areas covered when it comes to the footwear and clothing markets (as well as toiletries, electricals, etc). Nike is an extremely successful brand because of its image. Nike is more an idea than a pair of shoes. Its this reason why you can put a ‘Nike Tick’ on anything and people will buy it because they recognize it as Nike, and the connotations that are associated by the Nike brand are added to, say, cheap mass produced watch. One of the most interesting things about Nike is that they have different images in different markets. Different Nike products connote different characteristics. It is this reason why Nike sell t-shirts with a picture of a trainer on it. Looking at it objectively it is completely absurd, but to the person that is buying the t-shirt doesn’t see it as just a shoe, they see the idea that the shoe has come to represent.
Brands and names are used to categorise people into target markets, most decisions we make have been reduced to consumer decisions, and because of globalisation, are completely pointless. Whatever you believe in, whatever your tastes are or whatever moral code you live by, you are just a member of a target market, even if you are anti-capitalist, the capitalists have an option for you. This is because these are purely aesthetic options. For example, you decide that you’re opposed to the increasingly intensive production systems of a capitalist culture. You decide to buy your toiletries from The Body Shop, because they don’t test on animals, and you buy Green and Blacks chocolate because it is Fair Trade. You’ve spent a bit over the odds, but you know its worth it for a clear conscience. The thing you don’t realise is that Green and Blacks is owned by Cadbury, a company that in the past has been accused of using sweat shop labour. The Body Shop is owned by L’Oreal, a massive company that tests on animals and has been accused of “including harmful pollutants and worrying chemicals in its cosmetics.” L’Oreal also own 26% of Nestle, a company that owns a whole host of other companies. The majority of the market place is owned by just a few brands, effectively making consumer decisions pointless as peoples money is all going to just a few people.
It is similar with the media, which is owned by just a few people, meaning that decisions between whether to buy, say The Sun, or The Times, which are viewed as 2 completely different newspapers, as good as pointless. They are both owned, as are various other companies (like Sky, Fox and Myspace), by News Corporation. Although the content of the two newspapers varies, the underlying political viewpoint and choice of which stories to cover and what slant to put on them is ultimately made by one man.
Conclusion
To begin my conclusion I would like to quote Ludwig Feuerbach, who helped inspire both Marx and Hegel:
“But for the present age, which prefers the sign to the thing signified, the copy to the original, representation to reality, appearance to essence…truth is considered profane and only illusion is sacred. Sacredness is in fact held to be enhanced, in proportion as truth decreases and illusion increases, so that the highest degree of illusion comes to be the highest degree of sacredness.”
The majority of people are living in a world where they are being constantly ripped off for the latest product, as they feel it will enhance them in some way. We are living in a dream world where our possessions speak for us. This false consciousness is manufactured by an elite few, who use it to make themselves extremely rich.
The truth is that most people aren’t idiots, they know they are being conned, they know they don’t really need to buy yet another pair of shoes, but hey its doing no harm, we have all got enough money to eat, and they are really nice shoes.
It is true, despite extreme differences in wealth; the majority of people in the west have enough money to live in relative comfort. To realise the true harm that capitalism does we have too look further than the people of the west.
On a national scale the world is completely different from the time that Marx lived in, however on an international scale we can see similarities. The idea of their being two distinct classes, the bourgeoisie and the proletariat is still there. The people in the west, despite their differences, are the new bourgeois. The people working for a few pennies a day in developing countries, the millions of animals being kept in cages so small they cant move and the natural world is now the proletariat class.
Modern production methods mean that every time you buy a pair of jeans, chances are they will have been made in a sweatshop where people work 15 hours a day and still can’t afford to feed their families. Whenever you buy food with egg in it, it will have come from a hen that lives in a cage the size of a piece of A4 paper, and had it’s beak cut of without anesthetic, and everything you buy will have someway polluted the environment.
We are quite happy to destroy everything around us so long as we can consume constantly and unnecessarily.
Monday 10 December 2007
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