I first came across the idea of "down shifting" several years back, in a book by Kalle Lasn - Culture Jamming: The Uncooling of America. In the book, Mr. Lasn gave advice on how to escape consumerist hegemony: one was to simply get "mad" with corporations when they called you trying to sell stuff or when they wouldn't do what you wanted. Another was to live a simpler lifestyle, partaking less in material culture, living in a smaller apartment, buying a cheaper car or giving up your car altogether, not buying the finest of everything, shopping at the Goodwill instead of the mall, etc. There are a lot of problems with this.
One of the assumptions behind this type of reasoning - and maybe you agree with me - is that most people are privileged enough to be able to choose to do this to begin with. I don't know how things are in Australia right now, but the 800,000 in the USA who recently barely got an extension on their unemployment benefits, for example, might regard choosing to "down shift" as a joke. I would.
The "zero work" strand of the ultra-left has been around a lot longer than Hardt and Negri. The far left-communist (who might take Marx's son-in-law Paul LaFargue's The Right to Be Lazy as their inspiration) and even anarchist adherents (generally take Bob Black - Abolition of Work as some sort of guiding light) to this ascetic, voluntary vow of poverty often malign those of us who disagree with this approach as "workerists." "Workerists" who live the kind of lifestyle I have right now have "down shifted" not because we choose to live ascetically out of a broad range of lifestyle options available to us, but because our options right now are such that we've got little choice.
Brian
On Sun, 12 Jan 2003 billbartlett at dodo.com.au wrote:
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> Maybe, but perhaps Hardt & Negri's refusal of work idea is taking off, If so, its no "marketing" plan. (Sorry, that's too glib really, but the story speaks for itself.)
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> Bill Bartlett
> Bracknell Tas
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> http://www.theage.com.au/text/articles/2003/01/10/1041990094339.htm
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> A new definition of success
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> Melbourne Age
> January 11 2003
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> Dr Hamilton argues that it is fair to assume, however, that among the complex factors people ponder in making such a bold lifestyle change, "severing the bonds of materialism" is crucial.
--
"At times one remains faithful to a cause only because its opponents do not cease to be insipid." - Friedrich Nietzsche
"Il etait enfin venu, le jour ou je fus un pourceau!" - Comte de Lautreamont, Les Chants de Maldoror, 4th Hymn, Strophe 6