-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Today’s world market is based on consumption, not production. A meaningful strike, therefore, is not a suspension of labor, it is not walking out of the factory, a meaningful strike is a suspension of shopping, it is walking out of the marketplace.
Just as once it was the worker who was exploited, now it is the consumer. Of course, workers are still exploited, since lower costs mean higher profits, but the primary role of workers in today’s economy is as a particular class of consumer.
The consumer is exploited in a number of ways:
1) By being charged arbitrary prices that have nothing to do with the value (materials + labor + reasonable profit) of what is purchased.
2) By being constantly cajoled, enticed, seduced by advertising – commercials, billboards, internet ads – or worse, shamed, threatened, scared, into spending money on unnecessary goods and services.
3) By the collection and sale of personal information, without explicit permission or remuneration.
4) By the corruption of government and the discouraging of legislative or regulative redress of corporate exploitation.
On Wednesday, May 13, 2015, midnight-to-midnight, and every second and fourth Wednesday of each month thereafter, we call on consumers throughout the world to refrain from participating in the global marketplace.
1. Spend no money or at least restrict spending to necessities. We suggest the Rolling Stone Rule as a guideline: Don’t buy what you want; only buy what you need.
2. If a purchase is necessary – a bottle of milk, a pack of baby diapers, a single-malt whiskey – go to a local or regional business, not a chain store.
3. Stay off of Amazon, of course, but – if possible – stay off Google and any other sites – Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, etc. – which profit from the number of hits they receive.
4. Restrict cell phone use and other tariffed communications to necessary calls only. Restrict use of e-mail with providers who mine e-mails for the personal profile market.
5. Turn off the television or – if you’re addicted – watch as little as possible.
6. Read a real book, write a real letter, play a real game.
Everyone can set his or her own parameters. The General Strike hero will turn off his or her computer, phone and tablet for 24 hours. A tepid striker might set a token limit of one Facebook visit.
The Objectives of the Strike:
We can make no demands, since the General Strike will involve a group too diffuse and heterogeneous to rally around any particular list of grievances. Our aims would be:
1) A show of strength. We assume that strikers would find a one-day strike so little onerous that the market would have to contemplate future strikes a week long, or even a month.
2) Encouragement of targeted strikes by individual groups of consumers, for example Amazon customers, Gmail users, e-book readers – to the extent that the consumer strike can become a tactic with which particular demands can be enforced.
On Wednesday, May 13, join consumers everywhere in declaring their independence from the corporate marketplace. Then again on Wednesday, May 27, Wednesday, June 10, Wednesday, June 24 and so on.