2006-10-24

This is why we need Chaos Marxism.

A contributor to Generation Hex (see sidebar) gives us his thought on how to fight corporations on the astral plane. Interesting as far as it goes - that advertising is in fact a form of magic (to put it another way, mass psychology) is a vitally important insight, and the ideas he puts forward of how to conduct "magickal attacks against the corporate egregore" (i.e. damage the brand) are good ones, if somewhat stating-the-obvious for seasoned anticapitalists.

But sadly at the end it collapses into bog-standard liberal politics:


The best magick is practice. Your money is your voice. Try not to buy corporate products. Buy local and independent. If you're buying designer clothes, don't wear labels. Cut them off or blot them out. There's no way to stop supporting corporations completely. the luxury of the first-world is supported by the cheap labor of the third. But support good businesses, and don't give your money to the bad ones. Educate people about the worst corporations, and strike the egregores in their inevitable moments of weakness.


Not one word in this article about the fact that the "egregore" feeds on profit, and that profit is produced by its employees. In fact, not one word about the employees of the corporation at all - the people who do the real things that are "the thoughtforms channels onto the physical plane", to use the jargon. These people talk about smashing imperialism and capitalism, but are still under the brainwashing control of the entities they want to fight, in that they still systematically ignore the entity's weak point - the point where it feeds, the very interface between logosphere and meatspace. The point of production.

If this article even suggested that trying to raise consciousness among the employees of the corporations was even a possibility for action, then I would be delirious with glee. Also, the bullshit idea that small businesses are somehow not bloodthirsty psychic vampire entities shows where these people are coming from - i.e. wannabe small businesspeople themselves. It's just a systematic blindspot to the ways in which the thoughtforms that they fight actually derive their sustenance from the physical world.