Today is #StopBuyingCrapDay

Otherwise, it's known as Karl Marx's birthday.

I'm not a Marxist, whether of original persuasion, or Leninist, Trotskyite, Stalinist, Maoist, etc. Nor am I a neo-Marxist. Marx himself, though he made appeals for more scientific study of economics, wasn't that scientific. Besides, the Hegelian philosophical core idea behind his whole theory, the old thesis-antithesis-synthesis, is neither good science nor good philosophy.

That said, I find some interest in the Frankfurt School, for moving beyond traditional Marxist constraints on thought. Ditto for the likes of Franz Fanon, in part because people like him, unlike some alleged Marxists in the US today, do not believe everything reduces to class in the end. While I'm thinking of the likes of Doug Henwood, who tried to claim that Jim Crow was all about Southern whites breaking up working class Southern solidarity (not), or Adolph Reed attacking Black Lives Matter, not all alleged Marxists or fellow travelers are that way. Asad Haider is somewhat that way, though not as bad as what I've heard from others, I'll state.

Per the hashtag above, for various reasons, my day is different than Adbusters' Buy Nothing Day.

First of all, I want nothing to do with Adbusters' pretentiousness.

Second, per "No More Work" author James Livingston, in this piece, the market (though he's vague in the interview about what "the market" means), and its liberalism in the classical sense is a necessary part of democratic socialism.

So, by "stop buying crap," I mean:

1. The made in China tschotchkes you don't need.

2. Trying to at least cut down on junk food.

3. Stop buying overpriced "branded" products. Why are you paying money for a T-shirt or cap with some corporation's name on it? Why aren't these corporations paying you instead?

4. I mean, stop buying so much in general. Instead of approaching this from a Marxist angle, try a Zen angle. Or my neo-Cynic one. Revolt against society more. Per Livingston, some type of capitalism isn't bad. Hypercapitalism is.

5. And per the image (story behind it here), and something I need to do myself, is stop using credit so much.