essay4

�Urbanism is the modern way of tackling the ongoing need to safeguard class power by ensuring the atomisation of workers dangerously massed together by the conditions of urban production�

By the early part of the 20th Century capital�s power was being contested at precisely the location where the proletariat had their own potential stick (the removal of the donkey?) � the point of production.

Such working class combativity forced capital to develop further to counter this threat to its power. Fascism, social democracy (a technique the Situationists would later term recuperation), a couple of world wars were all deployed. The gradual shift of production away from the West to the colonies coupled with a simultaneous drive to increase consumption followed these short-term fixes.

�Things you own end up owning you��
(Tyler Durden)

This new consumer society has developed ever more rapidly since the end of WWII, to the extent that in Western countries (such as Britain) the economy is almost entirely based upon consumption. The only industries are service industries. Devices such as �built-in obsolesce� and technological innovation have to be employed to ensure that a society choking on its waste carries on buying. Our basic material needs have been met a long time ago. A whole new bunch of carrots were needed to dangle in front of us.

Of course these new carrots have not on their own been able to maintain capital�s authority. In the 1960s despite �never having had it so good� the post-war Keynesian compromise (i.e. carrots) was wrecked by the resurgence of class struggle.

The array of carrots dangled in front of us today is dazzling. The whole of the economic, social, cultural, and environmental structure is designed to force these carrots down our throats and for us to want still more.

T.V. Game shows, advertising, fashion and fads, lifestyle magazines, billboards, gadgets for everything, faster cars, faster computers, LP/8 Track/CD/Mini Disc/MP3. Hi-8/Betamax/VHS/Lazer Disc/DVD. Games consoles, mobile phones, cars that give you freedom�Slaves to the Ikea catalogue.com.

�With the achievement of a purely economic abundance, the concentrated result of social labour becomes visible, subjecting all reality to an appearance that is in effect that labour�s product. Capital is no longer the invisible centre determining the mode of production. As it accumulates, capital spreads out to the periphery, where it assumes the form of tangible objects. Society in its length and breadth becomes capital�s faithful portrait.�