black friday

 these pictures have been borrowed from a "twitter feed" from the Warehouse Workers United

The local television yesterday, to-day, and earlier ran story after story of  people shopping to buy unnecessary stuff. And they reported in enthusiasm, as cheerleaders of Mammon. They use unhesitatingly the language of advertising propagandists. "Black Friday" is to refer to an accounting term, where profits are written in black ink. "Black Friday", historically refers to the day Jesus was tortured, crucified, and died. This year the greedy stores pushed to have sales on the federal holiday of Thanksgiving Thursday. And the television had idiot, after gleekit idiot, speaking gleefully of great "deals", the word has become a mantra, a shibboleth. Outside stores before Thursday, days in advance, camping gormless idiots were interviewed. No, America does not dance about a golden calf; the rich have a bronze bull on Wall Street, and the poorer sort bow before electronic and plastic cows from China.

 

In Ontario California ten people were arrested for protesting against Walmart to-day. 

Why are the police in combat gear? Well, if a protestor can dress as Father Christmas, then the police can dress as Darth Vader.

Walmart is evil: to begin with.  There is no doubt whatever about that. Oh! But it is a tight-fisted hand at the grindstone, Walmart! a squeezing, wrenching, grasping, scraping, clutching, covetous old sinner! As Charles Dickens wrote about Scrooge and Marley, the world can scrive about Walmart. Much of the audience is old enough to know that Walmart did not exist in their memory, apparently it took some time for it to expand from its corner of Arkansas. To-day, it is the largest company in the world. Its six chief heirs of the founder, Sam Walton, constitute 42% of the wealth of America, so i read—more gold than Croesus, and Rockefeller. 

What the hell is Walmart? An entity that buys inferior goods from China, sells it with underpaid servants (which they lyingly call "associates", just as the biggest Bolsheviks called everyone "comrade"), to poor customers. Walmart cheats everyone, and harms everyone. They wish to suck every dollar, they are the epitome of capitalism. 

If one chooses to use an old meaning of industry, Walmart helps to destroy American industry (they are joined by legion), instead of buying from American companies, they buy from Chinese (again they are joined by legion). Thus helping to depress America. In China, the workers are paid far less, and the government is far less concerned with health, safety, and all those bugaboos that the capitalist American and his preferred political party rant against.

Walmart (and legion, including such as McDonalds) underpays its servants, so that they require government assistance to survive. These capitalists and their preferred political party do all they can to reduce the availability of such help. Walmart and their legions do all they can to reduce their tax liabilities.

Finally these workers are organising, as did industrial workers in the past. But as in the past, the companies have the police.

The greed of capitalism is complete. Community and justice are not to be considered.  The desire is maximisation of profit. How is that done? Reducing cost of production, and increasing the price. When this is done fully, the product which is the goods and the labor would be reduced to zero, and the price would be all. Which is an absurdity. A nothing that costs all. A complete concentration of wealth, with no distribution. To receive everything, to give nothing.

"Capitalism is contradictory as soon as it is complete; because it is dealing with the mass of men in opposite ways at once. When most men are wage earners, it is more and more difficult for most men to be customers. For the capitalist [i.e. employer] is always trying to cut down what his servant [i.e. employee] demands, and in doing so is cutting down what his customer can spend. As soon as his business is in any difficulties, as at present in the coal business, he tries to reduce what he has to spend on wages, an in doing so reduces what others have to spend on coal. He is wanting the same man to be rich and poor at the same time."   —  Gilbert Keith Chesterton. The Outline of Sanity. 1926.