Monday, December 20, 2004
(7:36 PM) | Adam Kotsko:
The Power of Refusal
It's all over the news: Christmas sales are weak. It may be over-optimistic of me, but could this be a sign that the multitude is exercising its power of refusal and saying, "Hey, could we maybe not do this Christmas thing anymore?" I know that that's what I think every year at this time.Does anyone know of a good Marxist analysis of Christmas? It seems like an obvious topic, because every retail store in the nation is depending on Christmas to supply a huge proportion of its annual revenue. How interesting that capitalism has managed to generate such huge profits from our felt obligation to give gifts. Is there any more efficient means of enforcing conformity in our consumeristic culture of debt than the appeal to "Christmas Spirit"? Perhaps in this era of full postmodernism, the true anti-capitalist must look more and more like Ebenezer Scrooge -- one must forsake human company on Christmas Day, not out of hatred for others, but precisely because one so greatly values human fellowship that one can't bear to see it corrupted into a mass of acquisitiveness, conformity, guilt, and despair every year.
(Like every ivory-tower academic type, I am of course disregarding my own advice.)
