blog, ..."false consciousness" ... and $220 jeans

Jun 26, 2008

"some stuff about "false consciousness" i found and $220 jeans"

on a sheet of paper i found the following:

commodity fetishism - social relationships are defined by the values placed on commodities. labor is traded for money which is traded for commodities. the social nature of society is destroyed by the abstraction of commodities--the separation of use-value and exchange-value (eg a pearl of no use worth more than a wrench of practical use). the purchaser of an item is alienated from a social relationship with the maker of said item, creating a "false consciousness" as to the nature of capitalism and the value of material goods and human life (or the social or societal value thereof).

to interrupt the page i found, i should mention that last night i was doing an inventory at diesel at the beverly center, and mostly i was going through item tags too fast to notice much detail. two details did catch my eye, though, one interesting but pointless, the other interested and quite pointed. the first: black leather bags were listed as neon yellow. the second: they had jeans that cost $220... there were also bags in the hundreds of dollars range but that's more common these days. but, seeing those jeans--and there didn't seem to be much too great about them; they weren't even "diesel" brand or some brand i'd heard of, where the cachet would have some alleged value in our modern society. they were just expensive jeans. the local salvation army shop in glendale is closing up and having a 75% off sale, and seeing those jeans made me want to stop by and pick up some clothes, maybe even some jeans, at 75% off just to demonstrate how fucked up our system is, when i could get jeans for mere cents, maybe a dollar, and there are some jeans for $220--and i'm sure there are even more expensive jeans elsewhere. the use-value and exchange-value sure are separated, and it's like society at large doesn't care... or if many do, it's not enough, not enough people, and not enough caring or something about all this would change...

but i digress. back to the paper i found:

cultural hegemony - rather than necessarily working toward its own collective needs, the working class accepts cultural innovations like compulsory schooling, mass media and popular culture serving the perspective of the ruling class, further subjugating the working class, despite any organization efforts to the contrary (eg labor unions or political parties [the lesser parties, anyway width='250' height='200' >). the rhetoric of the ruling class adn the resulting institutions, practices and the beliefs create (again, that term) a "false consciousness" as to the reality of "the Man" keeping us down, rejected because the masses do not want to believe themselves gullible or easily manipulated.

except, oh so many do accept some vague notion of "the Man" keeping them down, but they ignore it as best they can, hoping against hope that maybe someday, if they work hard enough and dream big enough that they can be "the Man" and keep others down--or maybe they are misguided enough to think they can lift others up by inserting themselves into the body of "the Man"--that thay can achieve the "American dream" with its accompanying riches... and then, they can buy some expensive jeans

also on this same sheet of paper of mine were two quoted bits of graffiti from the 1968 student uprising in Paris:

"Down with a world in which the guarantee that we will not die of starvation has been purchased with the guarantee that we will die of boredom"

"vivez sans temps mort" live without dead time

these are the things i write down from time to time, the things that get stuck in my head, but we've got over 4000 dead soldiers and thousands upon thousands of dead iraqis buying us cheap gas, right? and the world is a wonderful, peaceful place, so why should i even care how much jeans cost or what our "false consciousness" tells us is so, and what reality actually is in its difference... and its indifference

hell, i just queried an agent about one of my novels for the first time in a while. maybe this time will be the time i get something sold and i can be rich and famous and wear expensive jeans and wonder what the hell i was rambling about when i wrote this blog entry. let's all keep out fingers crossed