Lost in the Supermarket

 “Buy Now – the Shopping Conspiracy,” a documentary by Nic Stacey, 2024

This is a clever documentary about how the capitalist sales effort works at present.  It is narrated by an Alexa clone called Sasha, who is letting us in on the secrets of successful mercantile capitalism - but not to be shared with anyone.  5 or 6 rules are to be followed – encourage buying; plan obsolescence; create waste; lie more; hide more and control more.  It’s pretty tough on capital, but the solutions are the usual weak tea – buy less, fix stuff and regulate more.

The documentary interviews former top executives at Adidas, Amazon and Unilever who all have turned against capital’s methods and profiteering.  It also includes a proponent of fixing electronics; a designer trying to make clothes that are not disposable; activists who track waste, ‘recycling’ and intentional destruction of goods and an activist who shows how labels are full of lies, especially greenwashing.

First is to make buying as easy as pressing a button at home 24/7.  This was Amazon’s goal and they have succeeded, especially as endless ‘haul’ video’s attest.  The process is visualized as a conveyor belt dumping a product into your home almost instantaneously.  This ease obviously increases consumption, as there is no need to get in a car, look through a store, buy an item and drive home. Second is planned obsolescence.  You know, those printers that stop working, that e-toothbrush that lasts 2 years, that software or phone that needs to be upgraded, those products that are glued together and cannot be repaired, like Apple ear buds. It promotes continuous buying.  Third is waste.  Companies put ‘recycle’ logos on their items, or claim to take back their product after it breaks or is too used – all bogus.  Only 10% of plastic is recycled in the U.S.  Most corporations have zero plan about what happens to all these products afterwards.  Waste is up to the consumer or government, so corporations externalize their toxic junk problem to the public. Waste is exported to places like Thailand, Ghana and Chile.  In addition, vast amounts of perfectly good products and food are thrown away or damaged to keep the price up.  This is one of the most surprising scenes in the documentary.  It is a perfect description of exchange value prevailing over use value.

Fourth, to cover all this up it is necessary to lie in advertisements and on product labels. Greenwashing, blue washing, bogus recycling symbols, social uplift advertising, the color green used in ads, cheery smiles, straight-out lies - it’s all an attempt to divert the consumer into thinking their consumption is frictionless and ‘good.’  Fifth is to hide the evidence of waste and the damage it is causing.  This documentary is trying to counteract that but who is watching?  Sixth is the most important – to control perceptions and control the workforce who have an inside view of what is going on.  Lastly, to control politics and the legal systems, although the documentary barely touches this given the ‘partisan’ nature of politics.

Amazon actually has a facility dedicated to destroying unsold goods. Amazon’s ‘climate plan’ pledge applies to about 1% of their impact according to the former executive.  She was fired for leading fellow employees in a sustainability revolt.  The executive at Unilever makes the well-known point that shareholder prices and short-term profit thinking are not guides to how to manage production.  By 2050 there will be twice as much waste, which is the trajectory overproduction is on right now.  The familiar scenes of fast fashion products dumped in Ghanaian beaches shows a bit of what it is like.  15 million garment items are dumped in Ghana every week according to the Ghanaian clothes designer.  A ‘waste tracker’ located a facility where Thai workers labor by hand over toxic electronic waste, as many e-parts can affect human health. The documentary shows huge landfills across the world full of garbage and flows of throwaways flooding city buildings and streets.

The Sydney Opera House flooded with throwaway junk

What are their solutions?  The former Adidas exec has come up with a plant-based sneaker which will break down in the soil.  Others thunder against omnipresent single-use plastics in food packaging, pop/soda bottles and the rest. Micro-plastics are showing up in the fish and meat that humans consume, though no one is suggesting vegetarianism.  The iFixit guy says ‘buy less.’ He fought for laws to allow people to fix their own broken products and also advocated designing them in such a way as that is possible. The documentary does not mention buying used, sharing items, giving away items or exchanging items with others.    

And then there is ‘regulation.’  The theory is the capitalist government will supposedly restrain over-production, profiteering, consumerism, waste and the rest.  But they don’t really go into this because they can’t prove their assertion. Their position misunderstands the role of government in a capitalist economy, which is to be a handmaiden, if only sometimes issuing correctives.  The problems addressed in this documentary go to the heart of the consumer economy - unlimited growth, profiteering, environmental damage and the rest.  Certainly things have been done around the edges, especially in the EU.  Yet as one executive points out about planned obsolescence, if you told your board of directors that your product will last for many, many years, and future sales will be cut in half, they will throw you out and hire another CEO. 

The volume of production and intentional destruction of products presently hints that the price of some commodities is actually nearing zero.  This possibility undermines an exchange-value economy.  This documentary is a peek into the back room of commodity production and what that implies about a possible working-class and socialist future where production is for use, not just for sale.    

Prior blog reviews on this subject, use blog search box, upper left, to investigate our 17 year archive, using these terms: “Seaspiracy,” “You Are What You Eat,” “Planet of the Humans,” “Garbage Land,” “The Avalanche of Plastic, Stupid Packaging and the Lies of Recycling,” Monopoly Capital” (Baran & Sweezy); “Inconspicuous Consumption,” “Brandy Hellville,” “Civilization Critical.”  

The Cultural Marxist / November 23, 2024