Category: South West England

The 24 hour mora­to­ri­um on spend­ing, ‘Buy Noth­ing Day’ is this Sat­ur­day 26th Novem­ber in the UK. 6 years ago some Cana­di­an anar­chists came up with a cri­tique of ‘Buy Noth­ing Day’ and called for a new ini­tia­tive, ‘Steal Some­thing Day’.

As their orig­i­nal arti­cle seems to have vir­tu­al­ly dis­ap­peared into the unre­cov­er­able bow­els of the dig­i­tal archive of the inter­net, I thought I’d repro­duce their cri­tique along with it’s graph­ic and help doc­u­ment it. Hope­ful­ly it’ll help main­tain their ini­tia­tive for this ‘Buy Noth­ing Day’ and help peo­ple reflect on some of Adbuster’s prob­lem­at­ic claims.

Novem­ber 26, 1999 — Par­tic­i­pate by par­tic­i­pat­ing!
(Press release from http://tao.ca/~lombrenoire)

For the past eight years, a few self-described “cul­ture jam­mers” from Adbusters Mag­a­zine have dubbed the last Fri­day in Novem­ber “Buy Noth­ing Day.”

From their styl­ish home base in Van­cou­ver’s upscale sub­urb of Kit­si­lano, the Adbusters’ brain trust has encour­aged con­sci­en­tious cit­i­zens world­wide to “rel­ish [their] pow­er as a con­sumer to change the eco­nom­ic envi­ron­ment.” In their words, Buy Noth­ing Day “proves how empow­er­ing it is to step out of the con­sump­tion stream for even a day.”

The genius­es at Adbusters have man­aged to cre­ate the per­fect feel-good, lib­er­al, mid­dle-class activist non-hap­pen­ing. A day when the more mon­ey you make, the more influ­ence you have (like every oth­er day). A day which, by def­i­n­i­tion, is insult­ing to the mil­lions of peo­ple world­wide who are too poor or mar­gin­al­ized to be con­sid­ered “con­sumers.”

It’s sup­posed to be a 24-hour mora­to­ri­um on spend­ing, but ends up being a moral­is­tic false-debate about whether or not you should real­ly buy that loaf of bread today or … wait for it … tomor­row!

Well, this year, while the Adbusters cult enjoys yet anoth­er Buy Noth­ing Day, accom­pa­nied by their fan­cy posters, stick­ers, TV and radio adver­tise­ments and slick web­pages, a few self-described anar­cho-sit­u­a­tion­ists from Mon­tre­al’s East End are inau­gu­rat­ing Steal Some­thing Day.

Unlike Buy Noth­ing Day, when peo­ple are asked to “par­tic­i­pate by not par­tic­i­pat­ing,” Steal Some­thing Day demands that we “par­tic­i­pate by par­tic­i­pat­ing.” Instead of down­play­ing or ignor­ing the cap­i­tal­ists, CEOs, land­lords, small busi­ness tyrants, boss­es, PR hacks, yup­pies, media lap­dogs, cor­po­rate bureau­crats, politi­cians and cops who are pri­mar­i­ly respon­si­ble for mis­ery and exploita­tion in this world, Steal Some­thing Day demands that we steal from them, with­out dis­crim­i­na­tion.

The Adbusters’ intel­le­gentsia tell us that they’re nei­ther “left nor right,” and have pro­claimed a non-ide­o­log­i­cal cru­sade against over­con­sump­tion. Steal Some­thing Day, on the oth­er hand, iden­ti­fies with the his­toric and con­tem­po­rary resis­tance against the caus­es of cap­i­tal­ist exploita­tion, not its symp­toms. If you think over­con­sump­tion is scary, wait until you hear about cap­i­tal­ism and impe­ri­al­ism.

Unlike the mis­placed Buy Noth­ing Day notion of con­sumer empow­er­ment, Steal Some­thing Day pro­motes empow­er­ment by urg­ing us to col­lec­tive­ly iden­ti­fy the greedy bas­tards who are actu­al­ly respon­si­ble for pro­mot­ing mis­ery and bore­dom in this world. Instead of ignor­ing them, Steal Some­thing Day encour­ages us to make their lives as uncom­fort­able as pos­si­ble.

As we like to say in Mon­tre­al: diranger les rich­es dans leurs nich­es!

And remem­ber, we’re talk­ing about steal­ing, not theft. Steal­ing is just. Theft is exploita­tive. Steal­ing is when you take a yup­pie’s BMW for a joyride, and crash into a parked Mer­cedes just for the hell of it. Theft is when you take can­dy from a baby’s mouth.

Steal­ing is the re-dis­tri­b­u­tion of wealth from rich to poor Theft is mak­ing prof­its at the expense of the dis­ad­van­taged and the nat­ur­al envi­ron­ment. Steal­ing is an unwrit­ten a tax on the rich. Theft is tax­ing the poor to sub­si­dize the rich. Steal­ing is noth­ing more than a tax on the rich. There is sol­i­dar­i­ty in steal­ing, but prop­er­ty is noth­ing but theft.

So, don’t pay for that cor­po­rate news­pa­per, but steal all of them from the box. Get some friends togeth­er and go on a “shoplift­ing “spree at the local chain super­mar­ket or upscale mall. With an even larg­er mob, get togeth­er and steal from the local chain book or record store. Pil­fer purs­es and wal­lets from eas­i­ly iden­ti­fied yup­pies and busi­ness per­sons. Skip out on rent. Get a cred­it card under a fake name and don’t pay. Keep what you can use, and give away every­thing else in the spir­it of mutu­al aid that is the hall­mark of Steal Some­thing Day.

Down­load our detourned poster http://tao.ca/~lombrenoire, make copies and stick it up wher­ev­er you can. And don’t for­get, send your scam­ming and steal­ing tips to us at lombrenoire@tao.ca.

See you next Steal Some­thing Day which, unlike Buy Noth­ing, hap­pens every day of the year.