Saturday, June 24, 2023

A Critical Analysis of "The Story of Stuff"

The Story of Stuff is a short animated documentary about the lifecycle of material goods. Although, from a shallow watching of the documentary, it would seem as if it is a good critique of the capitalist system, I shall analyse, how it falls short of its goals in many ways. This essay presents a critique of "The Story of Stuff", mainly using a Marxist perspective.

State and Corporations

In the documentary, the narrator says that the “true job” of the government is to watch out for the people, and they hold true to the vision that the government should be of the people, by the people, and for the people. Then they claim that somehow the corporations came along and, using their wealth, corrupted the government of its original purpose.

This understanding of the state is not even an oversimplification but a completely flawed way to view it (I am using the term “state” instead of “government” because it represents something more general).

This view ignores the fact that the state itself is a symptom of class society; it emerged with class society and private property as a way for one class, the ruling class, to force its will upon other classes (whichever ruling class it might be—the aristocracy in feudalism, the bourgeoisie in capitalism, etc). The basic function of the state is to maintain existing property relations, to maintain the status quo. 

At least in the current context, there are two broad categories of institutions through which the state maintains the present state of things:

  • repressive apparatuses (the police, military, etc.), institutions that use physical coercion and violence;

  • ideological apparatuses (formal educational institutions, mass media, etc.), institutions that normalize ruling ideas.

Contrary to the claim made in the documentary, the state didn’t get corrupted by big corporations: when the bourgeoisie became the ruling class, state power was transferred from the previous ruling class to them. It is in the fundamental nature of the state to function in the interests of the ruling class. Even when it seems that the state is acting in the people’s interests, it is actually serving the ruling interests in the long term (I shall give an example of this in the next section).

Just the existence of a state implies the existence of different classes, which implies the existence of oppressors and the oppressed. There is not any abstract, ideal conception of the state (as they are saying in the documentary) that we have to somehow achieve someday because liberation is not possible without the abolition of the state.

Also, from the above discussion, it follows that the 49-51 statistic they present in the documentary (of corporations exceeding the number of governments as the biggest economies) is a meaningless one because government and corporations are not opposites; government is just one way for corporations to maintain power relations.

Reformism

Although the documentary doesn’t really provide any meaningful solutions to the problems it raises, when it does in the end, it seems to resort to very reformist solutions. Reformism does not seek to abolish, replace, or change the system in any meaningful way but actually preserves it in the long term by improving material conditions in the short term. Reforms only provide short term relief.

A good example of how reformism preserves the existing system and makes it more powerful (more difficult to replace) by helping it overcome its own contradictions would be FDR’s New Deal. During the great depression, when capitalism was falling apart globally and a truly revolutionary movement was in the making in the US, the American state intervened and introduced a number of reforms like social welfare, labor rights, increased public sector employment, environmental improvement programs, etc. These reforms prevented a true anti-capitalist revolution by providing short-term “relief”, and they preserved capitalism in the long term. Now what we see in the US is interesting, because all these policies of the New Deal have disappeared, and capitalism, by overcoming many of its key contradictions, has become more powerful than it was before. This is also a good example of how the state serves the ruling interests even when it appears to be protecting the people’s interests.

If the New Deal were never introduced, capitalism would have fallen apart a long time ago; the New Deal was one of the major factors that assisted in the advent of postmodern capitalism and its new dominating ways of control, modes of control that are much more powerful than those of modern capitalism. For example, the modern capitalist subject knows that they are under the control of an authority, but in postmodern capitalism, control starts to present itself as freedom, and the postmodern subject (or object, because the line between the subject and objects starts to fade away in postmodernity) freely and willingly interacts with systems that control it (social media, for instance)—self-exploitation becomes a dominant mode of social control in postmodernity.

Coming back to the documentary, all these solutions that they present in the video, like taxing the rich, labor rights, sustainability, etc., are nothing but an attempt to reform capitalism so that it overcomes, yet again, its own contradictions and becomes even more powerful. Taxing the rich is not a permanent solution, but the abolition of classes is; companies providing better wages and improving working conditions is not a meaningful change, but the abolition of wage-labor is. If it is true that companies intentionally make stuff that breaks as quickly as possible (planned obsolescence), then the solution can’t be companies simply making more long-lasting products, because the very existence of companies implies the existence of exploitation.

All this talk about sustainability, environmental activism, etc. is nothing but an attempt to make capitalism more sustainable. It seems more likely that climate change, global warming, etc. wouldn’t cause the extinction of the human species or the planet as many people claim because the bourgeoisie simply can’t afford that. With all the research being funded by these corporations in the fields of sustainability, environmental science, etc., it is much more likely that capitalism will preserve itself by overcoming some of its most extreme contradictions, and when it does, it will become even more difficult to replace it. 

Most of these people advocating for sustainability just want to eradicate the ill-effects of capitalism on the environment, not capitalism itself. But if we can have capitalism without its ill-effects, then what is the problem, really? Why do we need to abolish capitalism? The reason is that there are some things that will always be inherent to capitalism. Now, here we face a difficult question: is it more depressing to imagine the end of human life due to the climate catastrophe, or is it more depressing to imagine the perpetual existence of capitalism, a system that completely destroys everything that is human and constantly turns everything it captures into lifeless commodities? The environmental activists who just want to focus on the preservation of the environment fear the former, but I think we should fear the latter more. Alienation of labor and commodification are two very essential features of capitalism. Capitalism alienates us from, what the early Marx would call, our “species-essence”. So, the main focus shouldn’t be on eradicating these surface level problems that root out of capitalism like climate change, but the abolition of capitalism itself.

Consumerism

The documentary gives a good introductory account of consumerism, but its analysis of consumerism can still be extended in many meaningful ways.

The basic social phenomenon that lays the foundation of consumerism is what Marx would call “commodity fetishism”, the process that assigns commodities an inherent value, abstracted from all other social processes. People directly equate value with commodities instead of seeing the value of a commodity as a result of the labor put into making it. Commodities are thought to have some mystical properties trapped within them.

Commodity fetishism has existed as long as capitalism, but in postmodernity, this process is taken to its extreme by the dominance of sign-value. In classical Marxian economics, a commodity gains value from the labor put into it; this value then manifests itself into exchange-value (the ratios in which commodities can be exchanged) and use-value (the utility of a commodity). The theorist Jean Baudrillard, however, introduced a third kind of value, which he observed in the rising consumer culture of the late twentieth century: sign-value. This is the value commodities gain by using different signifiers (signs) to differentiate themselves from other commodities. The typical example of such a signifier is a brand logo. It doesn’t matter if the material component (amount of labor put into making them, the color, the fabric, etc.) of two commodities, let’s say two t-shirts, is exactly the same, they can still hold different values if one of them has a logo that signifies prestige.

This is one of the many contradictions of postmodern capitalism: although all commodities of a particular kind are infected with sameness and monotony (materially), they still present themselves in a hierarchy by just using signs that are not materially real. As commodities are things actually consumed by people, this contradiction is something that we can observe among the people too: the postmodern subject tries to differentiate itself from others by simply owning and consuming different objects (commodities), but it is in this very process of irrational consumption that the individual becomes just one sign among others. Therefore, consumerism leads to the loss of a true identity, or more precisely, the loss of one’s authentic self. 

In the documentary, they explain how, with rising consumerism, happiness rates started to decline. The reason they give is that people have less time to spend on things that actually make them happy like friends, family etc. Although this is a good explanation of increased unhappiness, this is something that has always existed with capitalism, not just consumption-focused capitalism. The major reason for increasing unhappiness with rising consumerism is the loss of an authentic self.

This increased dissatisfaction with monotonous lives is something that is obviously observed and experienced by a large number of people, and many of them recognize this as a systematic issue and demand a radical social change. What is then done by the ruling class to keep the system in place is the exploitation of this desire for change and the conversion of ideas of social change into consumable commodities. This is something strikingly visible in the increase of absolutely dull and uncreative forms of entertainment media (films, TV shows, etc.) with themes of rebellion, revolution, and social justice incorporated into them. These films, shows, etc., which are completely devoid of any originality, are made just for the purpose of passive consumption. When people consume these commodified versions of social change, they feel that they are actually participating in the process of social change (this is more of an unconscious process), which, of course, doesn’t happen.

Final Thoughts

The documentary is overall a shallow liberal analysis, with no solid theoretical framework being used. It is definitely a great resource for introducing people to the systematic issues that we face today, but it isn't, by any means, something that should be considered an ending point.

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