Why socialists should push for MORE consumerism, not less

It is. Can you show how it's not?

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This is fucking stupid, we need to build an anti consumerist movement to build a class conscious movement. The people who spend their whole lives working towards the next luxury item will never be comrades, people need to take a step back from the rat race to understand their exploitation.

so destroy the planet with reckless consumerism so that one day we could maybe shop our way into socialism?

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Protip: anyone who uses that phrase is automatically a reformist liberal. Period. There is no "magic formula" for revolution aside from direct action be it by "the masses" or a tiny vanguard.

The person who archives this thread and posts it to /r/shitleftistssay is the hero we need but don't deserve.

not OP does dual power fall under direct action?

I almost hesitate in posting ITT and giving OP any more attention. I'll just sage for good measure.

Yes. Bolsheviks used dual power as did the Spanish Anarchists.

what the fuck is this and why do you know it exists?

/r/shitleftistssay is a pretty well-known reddit sub.

that's nice, now go back there, nobody needs that cancer here

OP, you seem to miss the point of anti-consumerism. No one is saying "let your boss pay you shit wages by agreeing not to live lavishly". What we are saying is that consumerism perpetuates the circuit of capital and furthers the dominant ideology of capitalism. Getting people to want more and more stuff isn't going to make them go for socialism, or even fight their boss. If anything, it could very well turn them into Ron Paul-tier libtards who see the government's taxes and regulations as the reason why they can't afford a 13th pair of shoes. It also keeps people hooked on capitalist exploitation of the Third World. I'm no Third Worldist, but you have to admit nearly all of our cheap consumer products come from TW sweatshop labor.

To add: no one is suggesting minimalism by itself will end capitalism, only that divorcing your mind as much from the existing system will maintain its radicalism.

Collective self interest fgt

please stop anytime

Oh, I know. Socialism is the best interest of most humanity, much as liberalism was in the best interests of non-monarchs. But OP is some idiot ranting about welfare leeches.

GAAAAAAAY!

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Which is why leftism is generally not selfish, because we reject hierarchy outright and differ only in the methods we choose to fight it.

Do you even propaganda and ideology, fam?
Whenever the "middle class" get glimpses of consciousness they get fed the idea that the system is still fair and the only reason they can't obtain it all it's because the system is rigged by marxists/crony capitalists/lizards/joos/whatever and the markets aren't free and we are not living in real capitalism. Pushing consumerism doesn't work when people are immersed in pure capitalist ideology, in fact it make things worse by converting people to lolberts or pure fascists. Which by the way it's happening right now.

I want to beat you to death tbh fam.

Actually, leftism is selfish though not for the reasons that you may think. Acting for mutual benefits is currently necessary for mid-term survival (on the time scale of a few years) of individual human beings in many cases let alone for having livelihoods. The liberal 'individualist' acts as if people can survive and live independently of one another when even schizoids who have hydroponic systems and great Internet access can't do so.

In fact, I see a general tendency towards greater individual power if historical materialism is correct; access to means of production and materials for individuals will become far easier just as its management does due to cybernetics. I even reckon that this will be what causes the downfall of proletarian socialism once it has stopped being progressive and useful for the aggregate ends of people.

libcom.org/library/right-be-greedy-theses-practical-necessity-demanding-everything

Sorry for the double post, but I wish to respond to :

My experience of anticonsumerism has been quite mixed; I've bumped into one seemingly-left guy who took the Stirner pill in an odd fashion and backed 'idealism' although he had no clue what he was talking about. He happened to be a contrarian retard. Magazines like Adbusters pull off laughable stunts in trying to impress closet normalfags like the 'Billion People March' (which failed given that only a few people turned up) and elsewhere there's loads of edgy anarchists and punks who aren't even good at making originally-styled music let alone reading a single book.

Don't get me wrong, it was anticonsumerism that eventually led me to Holla Forums; it even led me to think about 'fully-automated luxury communism' before I heard the term. At that time I thought that socialism was indeed whatever the USSR had and wanted it anyway at my most 'authoritarian' moments.

I think that most anticonsumerists are just misguided, particularly by postmodernist modes of analysis such as poststructuralist deconstruction. They're fascinated by the worlds which are built using networked computers and they hang around relatively-esoteric places and websites with their own quasi-cyberpunk culture to go with it as a result of youth and being surrounded by increasingly-sophisticated technologies, from DeepMatrix and Second Life to P2P networks. This is something which we 'explicit' leftists are no strangers to; just look at the soviet cybernetics thread and the architecture thread.

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This does not follow, how does promoting conspicuous consumption, and the whole capitalist rat race where those not willing to degrade or work themselves to death, promote socialism?

So when I don't buy into conspicuous consumption because I haven o desire for it, it's "poverty tourism" and "classism"?
I hope you realize there are actually people that don't derive pleasure from endless throw-away gadgets.

The problem is not that we're not being buried in more stuff. It's exactly what prevents people from contemplating their situation. When you're not being distracted by the ravenous spectacle you have time to think.

What part of "some people are not interested in a consumerist lifestyle" do you not understand?

When is the last time the world saw a middle class revolution? Last time I checked it was predominantly peasants and upper class that launch rebellions.

Muh selfishness itself is a meme.

I think the Arab spring was basically a bunch of middle class internet kids in their teens and early 20s.

user they dealt with the lack of money with credit cards.

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Terrible idea, because socialism is not better on these terms. All these people will still not be able the desired luxuries under socialism, so why would they support a socialist movement? You'll just get a reactionary movement redirecting the people's energies.

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Arab Spring was a bourgeois liberal revolution at best.

It's all so dehumanising, this life.

Realize that anti-consumerism isn't targeting the working mom who is buying a new toaster, but middle class parasites who are completely programmed into the system.

this is bait, right?

Do shut up.

The only ones that really went off the hinges were Libya and Syria.
Libya after open western support.
And Syria after years of drought, and a rollback of social security that affected predominantly farmers and the unemployed.

Neither of the two were socialist revolutions.

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The only "socialist" thing to come out of the Arab Spring were some self-managed communities in Libya and Tunisia.

or we could practice common sense.

minimalism sucks, consumerism sucks, end of story

Not having the newest consumerist shit made with slave labor isn't close to fucking poverty. Poverty is eating beans every night for weeks because you have no fucking money, and people should try with that "poverty tourism" because then they'll see what poverty is.
If your wants ultimately outcome to material shit, then you're literally brainwashed by Capitalism. Capitalism feeds us the lie that entertainment, clothes, tasty foods, gadgets, will make us happy because it can easily and happily provide those things, the things that actually would make us happy are precisely the things it cannot provide and actively eliminates because they conflict with the system.

Don't forget Rojava.

Middle of the Road isn't a fallacy.

i thought this thread was about consumerism in socialism, witch is a good topic, because with the communications, the automatisation n shit we can produce more in less time, we can have more nice things with less work
but instread, i got accelerationist shit
you made me angry OP, i wish you werent user so i can know who the fuck you are and rape and torture everyone you love in front of you and make them think is your foult for posting this shit online
i hate you OP
i hate you

Heavy consumerism doesn't lead people to questioning the system any more than self-imposed minimalism does.

When a person reaches their personal limit to what they can afford, there's nothing forcing them to question the reason why that wall exists in the first place. They know that they must either sell their labor at a higher price and be allowed to proceed, or stay put and be content of their current status.

This is usually not perceived as a "symptom of the current economical system", but rather, "life".

This is literally the most autistic post I've ever seem.

This.
We need people to understand that they don't need capitalism, not hit some sort of consumerist rock bottom.

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This is why true anarchy will never be able to assemble a functioning military or even paramilitary group.

Syria may have been able to deal with the drought, but a destabilized Iraq with insurgents, and western powers funding them, dealt them a death blow

Of course anti capitalism can become lifestylism, and consumer goods are an important part of human happiness. I think socialism needs to be a movement that gives ordinary people what they want, but regardless of that, theres a difference between contentment and decadence. Capitalism encourages all our base desires, all greed all the time, and when real commodities aren't enough we get diamond water and the gift of nothing. I think that we need to take a measured approach, not opposing all consumption but overconsumption. We need to be happier with less, and learn the value of frugality.

Now as you said, of course anti capitalism can become it's own kind of identity. I don't know, but I think that capitalism​ uses consumer culture as one of its primary forms of propaganda.