<nettime> Coupsumerism v. Green Experimentation and Mobilization Potenti

Related to eco-state vs. anarchism debate, I think it's hopeful that some of the post-1960's notions of the inherent good of Counterculture are beginning to come under question. With a project like the Green New Deal, a "just transition" will include some wholehearted (and well-funded) experimentation, but the goal is to develop a better status quo (putting the sustain in sustainability), not an ongoing cultural rebellion for its own sake.

To this end, I think folks will appreciate some of the work going on at the Global Institute for Sustainable Prosperity. Specifically related to the "scope and scale of the State" debate, is a recent working paper put forth by economist Sam Levey around "mobilization theory".

http://www.global-isp.org/working-paper-no-126/

The paper is largely centered around repurposing the state's economic capacity for war-making to instead tackle the dual crises of COVID-19 and climate change. Levey goes into detail framing the implications of" tight" or "loose" mobilization and also defining many economic and cultural tools an administration might employ to balance the goals of a Green New Deal and public health in a pandemic against macro-economic pressures like resource scarcity and inflation. I would add to his argument that an essential piece of an eco-state project is a direct critique and subsequent retooling of the informational sector of the market, i.e. the marketing and advertising set, into a more collectivist organisation.

Having worked in a major corporate home goods retail marketing shop, I can tell you that the industry has what are called inward-facing and outward-facing "universes" or profiles of consumers. Here's an example:

Our ideal customer really cares what other moms in their 30s think. She loves to entertain and invite people in and wants her home to balance a sense of enlightened worldliness with wholesome rootedness and charm.

The marketers' goal is to land on a kind of "truth" about a certain way of being (already existing) and offer products/experiences/services that reliably enhance/reproduce/"value-add" to the trend. The essential trick is enlivening their customers' "truth" while avoiding the self-conscious embarrassment of IRONY, caused by marketers' creepy third or fourth party philosizing of who clients are and how they (commonly) live. Marketing's creepiness, especially in the web-enabled form, is made possible by the vast imbalance of information (big data) and legal authority (political and economic power) that the US affords corporations.

I agree with Rana Dasgupta's piece that anti-democratic elitism of big-teach monopolies is a real threat to meaningful mass-citizenship, but if we want to disrupt their exclusionary bubble, we have to understand and criticise the business-to-business products they are selling. These products are "marketing solutions" that promise to motivate consumption. The reason why it's a dangerous bubble is not the inevitability of compounding inequality (because Big-Tech supremacy is not inevitable), but that at the end of the day, Big-Tech "universes" and profiles of consumers are just not that good.

Just like having 300 cable channels and nothing good to watch, social media feels bad. While Zuckerberg can tell congress all he wants that customized ads justify Facebook's mass surveillance initiatives, that creepy sense of being haunted continues to grow, people balk at the gap between Big-Tech's claims to marketers and the poor quality of social connection being offered, in terms of comradery, leisure, services, products and logistics being offered.

Let's not forget that people use social media because of it's promise to enable meaningful social connections (across space and time). In order to counter Big-tech's claims to be able to motivate consumers, the Left has to offer better means of social connection as well as a types of production AND consumption that respond more directly to the Demos. At some point isn't it just more efficient and dignifying to our humanity to actually know each other, rather than have Big-Tech create uncanny facsimiles of ourselves, which are then traded behind closed doors?

The Left's recent push for massive federal investment (by fiat) is extremely important (and maybe the only thing that can wrest democratic power from private elites' insuler economy of over-valuing secret information), but we on the Left have to be very plain about what "standards of living" we are after this our Green New Deal--this size house. this type grocery. this type transit. this type hospital. this type factory. this type union and civic hall.

In hammering out these specifications, or just trying out a few things, there will be serious differences of opinion and heavy pushback from the entrenched elites of obfuscation, but real democracy means a serious public negotiation where freer flows of information are staked more closely to real resource flows. (Perhaps you can help me flesh this out?) Also importantly, the type of ironic doublespeak of corporate marketings' inward and outward facing "truths" about consumers has to be avoided (as a kind of civic virtue), while preserving some "softness" by way of hospitality. What can follow from a kind of common sense, social approach is a well-stocked experimentalism quickly building into an ecologically responsible status quo, and in very a pro-cultural mode, no less.

Just trying to make sense of a few of these recent threads at once. Thanks!

Vince

G. Vincent Gaulin

211 Keese St.

Pendleton, SC

m. 864-247-8207