RE: Addiction, Advertising, & Easy Virtue (was Re: How far do we go?)

["Lisa & Ian Murray" <seamus@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Yoshie:

 I am in favor of eliminating cigarette advertising (as well as all
 idiotic corporate advertising, though it's impossible to do so under
 capitalism).  However, it is not clear whether the absence of
 corporate advertising will make a huge dent in consumption of
 addictive goods & production of addiction.

*********

Um, liberalism, free speech. How would you counter that argument? Without
being authoritarian.


> No corporation bombards us with ads for pot, cocaine, heroin,
> glue-sniffing, etc.; in fact, use of such drugs for recreational
> purposes has been often strictly regulated and/or prohibited by the
> state, frequently with stiff penalties; moreover, NGOs as well as
> governments have saturated most nations with negative ads against
> recreational drug use (sometimes going so far as to try scaring the
> living daylights out of people -- remember _Reefer Madness_?).  _And
> yet_, addiction has & will remain a problem.  The root cause of
> addiction, it seems to me, is _alienation & oppression_ (& relative
> and/or absolute _impoverishment_ in the case of the poor).



************

They would if there weren't the laws on the books. The laws are barriers to
entry, serving the other "sin" industries by protecting them from
competition for access to our bodies. On this I do agree with Doug, morality
ain't part of the picture at this level, it's just a foil for $$ interests.
Drugs are fun not non-alienating. Lots of folks take them out of
experimental proclivities too, not just escape from alienating
circumstances. Jerry Garcia was not alienated or oppressed, neither was
William Burroughs [just try oppressing that guy :-)]





>
> The presence of addictive goods alone does _not_ cause addiction; nor
> does advertising for them.  It is social relations that are
> responsible for it.
>
> Consider the eating disorder.  Foodstuffs -- coffee, chocolate, etc.
> excepted -- are _not_ addictive goods in themselves; _and yet_,
> consuming or not consuming food can become a _consuming passion_.  We
> may ban ads for food, but I do not think that banning food ads will
> make the eating disorder disappear.
>
> The appearance of compulsive behaviors that are named addiction in
> large part is rooted in the social relations fundamentally defined by
> direct or indirect subjection to the compulsion of M-C-M'.  I doubt
> that pre-Columbian tribes in the Americas were addicted to tobacco,
> peyote, etc., though they did make use of them.  Use of tobacco did
> not become abuse then when there existed no ensemble of social
> relations that would give rise to behaviors directly or indirectly
> driven by M-C-M'.
>
> In the case of the eating disorder, in addition to the compulsive
> logic of M-C-M', I hold sexism responsible for its emergence &
> development.
>
> _Only by eliminating our subjection to M-C-M' & all other oppressions
> that compel us_ will we all -- not just the exceptional few -- be
> able to practice the virtue of moderation in an Aristotelian fashion.
> (Remember that under capitalism _even_ an attempt at moderation can
> paradoxically become itself compulsive.)
>
> _Virtue must come easy_ -- in sex & everything else.  Socialism, I
> believe, is in part about _creating the ensemble of social relations
> conducive to the practice of easy virtue_.  The Old Man of the Left
> said, "In place of the old bourgeois society, with its classes and
> class antagonisms, we shall have an association in which the free
> development of each is the condition for the free development of
> all."  It is important to keep in mind that Marx did _not_ say that
> "the free development of all is the condition for the free
> development of each."  Why?  Because Marx differed from Rousseau &
> said no to the republic of Spartan virtue.  To agree with Marx here
> is not the same as rooting for libertarianism.
>
> Yoshie
**********

Marx would've loved pot.....

Ian
>