Status Updates From The Anti-Capitalist Book of...

“In the face of the threat of climate crisis, remember that capitalism’s speciality is making us feel powerless and divided. Our task is to focus on our commonality, no matter our differences in regions, races, genders, and so on. This commonality exists in our need for this planet and in the fact that as a global working class, we do not need capitalism.”

“Decolonization is a dual process. A simultaneous dismantling of colonial systems and a rebuilding of indigenous worlds. But we must be clear that true decolonization has earth shaking and reworking consequences. Decolonization must be recognized and understood as an expressly material process.”

“It is crucial that the political project of decolonization does not turn into a culturalist project of representation. It becomes essential that any decolonizing discourse does not act as another settler move to innocence by focusing solely on decolonizing the mind without explicit material consequences like repatriation of stolen indigenous land and reinstatement of indigenous sovereignty.”

Decolonization: a eurocentric word first used by British colonial administrators and politicians as they watched their empire crumble. For them, decolonization was the disappointment of the imperial illusion of permanence; the end of empire.

In reality, decolonization was not a political change or a subtle rebalancing of power. It was a violent and bloody struggle. Violent end to violent occupations.

If we had less clothes… solutions: clothing libraries! Instead of shops, we’d go get jeans or new dresses from a store that acts as a library. That would be so sick. (Not in the book. My idea based on the concept of socialized production and clothing share)

“Sweatshops and compartmentalized tailorist methods of production compound alienation. They turn highly skilled, autonomous artisans, like the silk weavers of Leon, into workers on assembly lines. Passing objects or parts of objects in front of them on a 12 hour shift.”

“Being an environmentalist does not mean aiming for a society of scarcity. Humans differ from animals in that we free ourselves from need through production. It is important for culture that we are not in a position of scarcity because, as Trotsky explains, culture feeds on the sap of economics and a material surplus is necessary so that culture may grow. Art needs comfort, even abundance.”

“I am nothing and I should be everything.” - slogan of the Russian working class during the Russian revolution

There is a long radical history of people gaining rights for themselves/others by acting as political consumers. The Russian revolution began w/ women’s protests over bread prices. The Montgomery bus boycott was so widespread that it ended racial segregation on buses after 13 months. The Harlem housewives league carried out a ‘don’t buy where you can’t work’ campaign to force shops to hire black employees.

“It is important here to remember that fashion brands are not people; they don’t have personalities or hopes or dreams. They are corporate entities with one goal: to make more money than their competitors. If they perform a hollow imitation of sounding progressive, it is because they are responding to swells in public opinion which they are no longer able to ignore.”

“Time after time, ad campaigns from Gap, Levi’s, and so on, sell us back our own ideas devoid of original meaning and used as a screen for human rights and environmental abuses. The language has changed, the practices have not.”

The greenwashing, use of feminist body positive language, diversity language etc. used by corporations to get the consumer to identify wholly with a brand & not scrutinize it

2/2 Encouraging people to think about something as having innate positive qualities or innate negative qualities is misleading and unhelpful. It’s not about the qualities of the thing, it’s about how this thing came about and what’s going to happen to it. No matter then if an item is made from recycled polyester or organic cotton when millions of them are being flown around the world and dumped in landfills.”

1/2 “It’s changing the way people think about sustainable behavior by reducing it down to ‘I’ll buy this thing and not that thing.’ Attaching the word sustainable to the properties of a garment is not just a linguistic issue, rather it protects big business from scrutiny regarding their manufacturing processes and governance.

“You can’t have a sustainable pair of jeans because ‘to jeans’ is not a thing that you do, it’s not a verb. You can’t ’jeans.’ Instead of applying the verb sustainable to an inert object, Kate explains that it is the hundreds of processes that brought a pair of jeans into existence which must be judged as sustainable or not.”

“A conceptual impurity regarding the word ‘Sustainable’ is rendering the concept almost completely meaningless, with brands using it however they please. It’s almost like a grammar issue or a misunderstanding of how to use the word. For something to be sustainable, it has to be able to be done forever. Sustainability is a process, it is not a fixed moment and definitely not an individual object.“

The neoliberal mindset that permeates the fashion industry must be shaken off because it is dangerous nonsense. Rather, we must confront the issues in this book critically & with a collectivist, anticapitalist attitude. We do have agency on an individual level & high carbon footprints must be brought down, but we must confront the challenges ahead collectively & w/ a realistic assessment of the barriers people face.

“What you do as an individual does count and choosing to tread as lightly as possible upon the earth is essential, but it is not enough to take us off the dreadful trajectory we are on. There is no way out of sweatshop labor or environmental devastation via an individual route. You cannot shop workers in China to freedom. You cannot shop the Aral Sea back to life.”

“Class is the primary factor. You buy what you can afford. If you cannot afford 30 pounds for a pair of pants, then it does not matter that they are handcrafted in Britain from organic cotton. You will have to buy 5 pairs for 5 pounds at Primark and will probably feel guilty and ashamed for doing so.”

“Clothing is presented to us as a question of individual choice. On the surface, the choice seems simple: good clothes or evil clothes. if you choose the good clothing, you are virtuous. If you choose the bad clothing, you are wicked. While it makes sense to buy the least harmful option when purchasing any product, what about the myriad factors that determine choice?“

“Join us in rejecting the tired notion that shopping is a reasonable response to human suffering.”

- buylesscrap.com

“The painful irony in social rebels having to view the signs of their rebellion sported in exquisite materials by those they thought they were rebelling against.”

- how it feels to see straight women co-opting lesbian fashion for real

*kufiya head scarf

“The dialectical relationship between the fashion industry and resistance fashion means that resistance is simply absorbed, repackaged, and sold back to us.”

- discussion of kafirs (Palestinian headscarves used for protest) being sold in Top Shop as “desert headscarves”

- Marc Jacobs grunge collection, sent to Kurt Cobain and Courtney Love. They promptly burned it

“Committing to wearing a boiler suit for the rest of your life does nothing to help the oppressed women in China who made that boiler suit. Homemade or second hand clothes are still produced using materials made under capitalism. It is impossible to refuse to participate.”

True, but I think the way you participate matters almost as much as your participation.

“Dress can be an act of resistance and a powerful force in resistance movements, particularly among women and nonbinary people. It has the power to be bold, embodied, & defiant. Its significance regarding changing the structures of society, however, depends on whether there is a movement behind it. In this way, fashion & clothing are a form of simmering dissent rather than a decisive & final revolutionary act.”

“For women in Palestine, during the first intifada, Palestinian flags and colors were banned in public, so women made intifada dresses, embroidered with doves, rifles, and political party symbols, worn to signify resistance to the Israeli occupation.”

Intifada is an Arabic word that translates to “shaking off” and has been used historically to describe Palestinian uprisings against Israeli occupation.

“Yoruba women resisted the British occupation of Nigeria by wearing only their traditional clothes and speaking to the authorities only in Yoruba, their medium for expressing far reaching dissent.”

- yoruban women were leaders of the markets and led many grassroots movements to defy British colonial rule

2/2 Enslaved people were given clothes made of osnaburg linen, a uniform meant to humiliate and rob them of their cultural dress practices. Yet, these fabrics were fashioned and accessorized to reflect African modes and aesthetics. This was one way for people to prevent cultural alienation and hence, psychic annihilation.”

1/2 “Under the system of slavery in Jamaica, plantation owners instigated practices designed to strip enslaved people of their pride, dignity, and most of all, their African identity.