Buy Nothing Day!
Today is Buy Nothing Day. It’s also known as “Black Friday,” the semi-official start of the Christmas shopping season and the supposed busiest shopping day of the year. Culture-jamming magazine AdBusters promotes this day as a day to take a stand against buying. Its a 24 hour consumer fast!
AdBusters encourages activists to put up stands in the mall offering to cut up peoples’ credit cards, form a conga line of empty shopping carts or to dress as zombie and walk around the mall, mingling with the other consumer zombies.
Of course, as a shop owner, it seems odd that I would get behind this idea. But as a devotee, it makes sense to me. Isn’t that our philosophy? All this materialism is the opposite of what we’re trying to do. This is extremely gross materialism. At least “eating, sleeping, mating and defending” are fairly necessary. Gross consumerism is not only unnecessary, it destroys our spiritual life.
However, fasting on one day, only to buy it the next will do little to quell our materialistic nature. It will do little to stop the huge corporations whose real desire isn’t our happiness, or even our material happiness – their real desire is for their own material gain, their own profits.
This whole thing runs thick with exploitation. The corporations, the capitalists are exploiting our twisted desire to buy more crap. They’re exploiting the workers in the sweatshops, and the environmental resources used to make the things we feel we so badly need. And, unable to escape culpability, we are exploiting all these things as well when we take part in this system.
Why do we do this? Simple, it’s human nature to exploit others. That doesn’t even come close to making it right.
Srila Prabhupada: Profit-making may be wrong, but that exploitative tendency is always there, whether it is a communist or a capitalist system. In Bengal it is said that during the winter season the bugs cannot come out because of the severe cold. So they become dried up, being unable to suck any blood. But as soon as the summer season comes, the bugs get the opportunity to come out, so they immediately bite someone and suck his blood to their full satisfaction. Our mentality in this material world is the same: to exploit others and become wealthy. Whether you are a communist in the winter season or a capitalist in the summer season, your tendency is to exploit others. Unless there is a change of heart, this exploitation will go on.
I once knew a mill worker who acquired some money. Then he became the proprietor of the mill and took advantage of his good fortune to become a capitalist. Henry Ford is another example. He was an errand boy, but he got the opportunity to become a capitalist. There are many such instances. So, to a greater or lesser degree, the propensity is always there in human nature to exploit others and become wealthy. Unless this mentality is changed, there is no point in changing from a capitalist to a communist society. Material life means that everyone is seeking some profit, some adoration, and some position. By threats the state can force people to curb this tendency, but for how long? Can they change everyone’s mind by force? No, it is impossible. Therefore, Marx’s proposition is nonsense.
-Srila Prabhupada, Shortcomings of Marxism
And on today, Buy Nothing Day, sure, go ahead and take that stand against consumerism. But remember that stand tomorrow and the next day and next month, the next year and for the rest of your life. Also remember that the desire to exploit others for our own personal gain is always there. We can make endless justifications for it, even in so-called spiritual life.
The state, always in bed with the corporations, cannot curb this tendency. And if we’re honest, an anti-capitalist ad campaign cannot permanently curb it either. But through our spiritual lives, we can most definitely defeat the desire to exploit others through our gross consumerism.
“The material stomach is always hungry again; it can never be satisfied. In the Krsna consciousness movement we have the substance for feeding our brains, our minds, and our souls.” – Srila Prabhupada
