Our Zara
Who art in Etam
Starbucks be thy name
Thy Diesel come
Thy Gap be done
On Lakeside
As it is in Bluewater
Give us this day our daily Curries
And forgive us our Tesco
As we forgive those who Tesco against us
Lead us not into Ikea
And deliver us from Dixons
For thine is the Waitrose
The Asda
and the Virgin
for ever and ever
Argos.

well it looks like i'll have to drag myself away from the bullring for a day, it looks as if i'll have to buy all those luxury goods that my minimum wage affords me on the friday so i dont get any urges to go out and ruin buynothingday by landing myself a new jaguar or a pravda handbag.

Do you realise how patronising this psuedo-situationist twaddle sounds?

I'm not seduced by the allures of commodity fetishism, i buy things because i have to survive, and the reason i have to pay to survive is because a class of people have control over the means by which i would survive, i have to work for these people and in exchange for my labour they give me a tiny part of what ive made in the form of a wage, this wage allows me to buy back goods and services which fellow employees have made, only i have to buy them back at a price that is greater than the price i or my fellow employee was paid to make them, this keeps us in a situation whereby we have to keep buying resources in order to survive.

Maybe we could have an economic depression, then we could loads of buynothingdays and if were lucky a couple of eatnothingdays, then we'd know what it was like for those poor in africa and we'd be closer to our natural hunter-gatherer roots and soon the capitalist order would crumble cus they wouldnt be able to make us buy anything.

The fight against capitalism starts at the point of exploitation, not in its corollary, any "cause" that is detatched from the focal point of society is destined for recuperation in the hallways of power and the corridors of established society. Buynothingday is about as useful as concrete shackles in a 100meters race. However as i'm utterly skint i shall probably be adhering to the theme of the day nonetheless, infact owing to my financial situation i'll probably be on a buy nothing fortnight thus making me considerably more subversive than yaow!

so it may not be quite as radical as er ...doing nothing, but lets get one thing straight

for most people, like myself, in doing stuff for buy nothing day are striving for a culture change away from profligate capitalist consumption and are doing this in a light-hearted way to reach out to those who would otherwise turn a blind eye. Only when people stop shoving MaccyD's down their throats and sporting Nike tat will I stop taking part in such 'patronising' actions...and Let's be honest that ain't going to happen tommorrow. But hey, let's just sit back and criticise...

This isn't arrogance, this is merely acknowledging the truth that most people actually aren't aware of the damage excessive consumption is doing to this planet and its people.

Another thing which needs clarification for those trolls who persistently criticise BND to excuse their failure to get involved; Buy Nothing Day, is not merely a DAY without consumption, it's symbolic - that's clear. For crying out loud, stop taking it so seriously!

"Only when people stop shoving MaccyD's down their throats and sporting Nike tat will I stop taking part in such 'patronising' actions"

I wear nike trainers, does this make me a lesser person than you?

By implying that only large corporations that make the biggest profits are the problem you are only asking for your half-arsed critique to be psuhed down the myriad aisles of "fair trade" consumption. Your self-deprecating stance makes it seem as though capitalism is something that takes place only in third world sweat shops and that in britain we affluent westerners just consume, consume, consume. Its not that the critique isnt radical enough its that it misses the point.

Every company exploits its workforce its not just your nikes and your mcDonalds, everything you buy has been produced from the labour of an exploited workforce, the purpose is not to simply boycott those "evil" corporations but work towards the self organisation of workers who can really undermine the landscape of capitalism and do away with all exploitation.

Often doing something for the sake of it is less productive than doing nothing (another patronising assumption), i think you'll find your place in the chris martin aisle of tescos!

why not highlight all product fetishisation and the exploitation inherent in all services/products? Why just the particularly succesful companies?

In response to the second post which dismisses buy nothing day as patronising to those who cannot afford to partake in "consumerism", and ineffectual because it does not tackle the root cause of capitalist exploitation, I think you should at least suggest an alternative rather than sit at home and do nothing. How do you expect to tackle the 'root causes' of capitalism if the most of the population are in favour of it because they cannot imagine any alternative, are only vaguely aware of the problems it causes, and do not know which people and organisations are complicit in maintaining the status quo?

Buying nothing is a symbolic act, the purpose of the day is to make people think about the effect their own spending habits have both on the planet and humanity. Almost everything that is manufactured consumes oil-derived energy in the process which contributes to global warming. There are finite resources on this planet yet capitalism is based on infinite growth. Many goods, especially clothing are made in sweat shops in poor countries where people are paid next to nothing and work in appalling conditions. Everywhere people are paid what the market rate dictates, not for the value they add to the product. The biggest lie politicians tell us and the people in poor countries is that "trade will lift the poor out of poverty". What they fail to mention is that for every person on the planet to have a standard of living the same as the average person in the UK would require 4 planet earths of resources, proving the prescriptions of the G8, WTO, and IMF are perpetual exploitation thinly veiled as progress for all. They will always be poor and this lie is sold to pacify dissent.

Across the world there is a movement of worker's co-operatives which attempt to produce their goods as ethically as possible. At the very least people are paid equally and run their own affairs. As many are motivated for political reasons they are keen not to exploit others and to minimise the impact their operations have on the environment.

There are alternatives, but they are hard to find and people at least need to be know of their existence if they are to make changes to their way of life. If people are informed they can at least do their own research and make their own (informed) decisions about how they live their life. There are many different approaches to tackling the problem of capitalism. This is just one of them and I think it is more than worthwhile.

if that helps, Insatiable Consumer. The point is not to go out on the friday and buy everything you would otherwise buy on the saturday, although that would still have the benefit of causing shock to the market on a large enough scale. As others have said, it is symbolic, and it will put a message out there. Of course, messages do very little on their own... But it's a first step.

first off i dont think that most people support the society we live, but like you say there does seem to be this idea that "this is the way things are, there is no alternative". I agree we have to provide examples of what a different society would look like, one run upon the basis of direct democracy, production for peoples needs and a general equality. I also think we need to espouse the historical basis of the world today, how it has come about through hundreds of years of class struggle and isnt something thats set in stone or natural.

However i dont think we can make this step by simply targetting consumption. Like ive said many people in the UK, including myself would like the oppportunity to consume more, not as some fetishistic need but in order to attain a better life, i know this consumption doesnt have to be in the form of the commodity. I dont think putting some sort of guilt trip onto the general public will win many people over to the cause, especially as so many people really cant afford to consume all these luxury consumer goods.

I think the way to do it is not to tell people off for exhuberant consumption, cus as i say this isnt the case for most people, but rather to point out how capitalism itself eats up the worlds resources, how the rich are able to shower themslves with excess at our expense, how the world is run on the basis of producing for profit for the economic benefit of a minority. It follows from this that if we were to take control of the productive apparatus of society we could organise production not only along the line of peoples needs but for the better of peoples lives, increasing the living standards of the vast majority. This seems to go against what your saying, it almost seems as though you expect greater austerity following any revolutionary change.

I think its important to highlight the posibilities of a socialist society, how when we have control of all productive apparatus we can build towns how we see fit, create energy that isnt based on centralised production, produce for the satisfaction of peoples needs.

A large amount of resources are spent buttressing the existing state of affairs, the amount of energy and paper consumed in bureaucracy for example (insurance, sales, finance) is incredible, these are all industries that only really exist to maintain class hierarchy, in a new society they would be irrelevant and obsolescent. I think its important that we spread such ideas, that we discuss in our work places what industries are useful and which are just parasitic and reactionary. Then work towards a situation whereby we would have an opportunity to decide how our labour should be spent. This invaribly means getting together in our workplaces and communities, organising against bosses, shareholders and landlords, sewing the seeds of a new world within the existing one in order to create a power that can work against the exploitation of labour. Of course it isnt easy but i think we can have fill our lives with symbolic gestures of resistance and they get us nowhere in particular.

This was come up with some years ago, as a part response to Buy Nothing Day, & something in itself. Still as valid: check out image (for fliers/stickers?) and text at  http://earthfirst.org.uk/actionreports/node/2012

so while insatiable customer is out in his workplace empowering his colleagues, some people go into the streets to make a symbolic gesture ..... beautiful .. the revolution really is happening. There's room for all of us

(except those who've nothing better to do than try to rankle through email ripostes)