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Despite
what efforts go into community building throughout
the year, by the time we have reached the fifty second
week capital has ensured that consumerism rather than
communalism reigns supreme. All the money we have
rightfully managed to force out of the bosses over
the year is handed back to them in desperation induced,
more than fatuous, obeisance to the thing called Christmas.
Ever penny of it and more to boot is drained out of
us - part of next year's work, in both the normal
economy and its parallel black one, will be performed
merely to pay off the bills that have accrued through
the rabid festive spending orgy. Interpellated by
capital as 'consumers' we have, like Lot’s wife,
turned around, unable to resist, and have fallen uniformly
into line; defeated slaves kneeling down to kiss our
chains. Our very children are the pressure point -
such ‘sweet cute little things’ that we
are made to feel criminal if we do not treat them
to the best regardless of the expense.
Seemingly,
to capital, Western children are so valuable that
Chinese children can be coerced into slave labour
to satisfy their needs. To provide for our young,
those of Chinese parents work for thirty cents an
hour in the crammed sweatshops along the Pearl River
Delta - '1.5 million peasant girls sweating through
a sub-tropical summer in 12- or even 14-hour shifts
inhaling toxic fumes', in the words of one report.
Now why a heavenly character like sweet pious St Nicholas
would favour children with white faces over those
with yellow ones is mystifying. Operating the Janus
principle - the face of St Nick here and that of Old
Nick in China.
But
the hungry reindeers of old Satanic Claws are oblivious
to all of this. Fed on that most nutritious of substances
- profit - they make their way to our homes to let
us know that they really do love our kids. And why
wouldn’t they - the endless source of those financial
nutrients?
The
Money Advice and Budgetary Service (MABS) which was
set up in the Republic in 1992 has observed that 'we
buy according to whim with little thought for the
long-term consequences.' It works primarily to help
the better off who get themselves into debt problems.
Helen Brady of the group explains that 'the poor know
the value of money all too well. It is the middle-class
people, who have never really had to worry about their
incomes, that are now seeking the advice of MABS in
greater numbers than ever before.'
But
this is to overlook the problems faced by poor people.
They may well know the value of money, but they also
know the social stigma that goes with children equipped
less well than their playmates. And it is not that
they are out of touch with the long term consequences,
but they are forced to confront them rather than have
their kids scorned for their poverty.
Unfortunately,
despite living in impoverished communities, the social
cement that would normally provide some community
cohesiveness is all too easily liquified by the call
of capital. Atomisation grips the community fever-like.
It is as if capital has thrown a primed device in
amongst us and the only salvation lies in stampeding
wildly - each for themselves and let the devil of
guilt claim the hindmost - in the direction of the
big department stores. The kids next door can't be
allowed to put our own to shame so the bar is raised
higher every time. Some new product is devised, marketed
superbly and presented as indispensable in order to
ensure that we - programmed to feel guilt and avoid
it - will all go chasing after it. All the while capital
makes us feel that, as consumers, we have failed our
children if we do not buy even on HP what it has to
offer.
In
houses I have visited Christmas is a time of the year
to be dreaded. The regime of Merry Christmases and
its accompanying false bonhomie is pure superficiality,
the gloss concealing people that are anything but
merry. It is a pseudo-smile to mask the teeth-clenched
grimace of poverty. Some people have spoken of the
debt they have fallen into with money lending agencies.
Borrow one thousand and pay back twice as much. It
seems at least there is one aspect of all Ireland
economic harmonisation that is grinding ahead unperturbed
by the political nonsenses that are supposed to consume
everybody else. The Irish Times reported that
in the Republic ‘moneylenders are still setting
rates of 200%’ . Only for the history of resistance
in these communities loan sharks would be beating
in people's doors and menacing them and using violence
for payment. Although how long such security shall
remain is a moot point. Ominous clouds already billow
on the horizon as a result of the Rachmans of the
West Belfast building industry having for the first
time been on the guest list of a inaugural mayoral
banquet.
Breda
O'Brien has described Christmas as a ‘pitiless
magnifying mirror to what we are’. Yet it is
worse than that. It has become the systematic onslaught
on the poorest in society. Surely in communities like
our own it is not beyond the ability of those who
live here, with their accumulated sense of collective
action, to work against the precision targeting of
the poor. We can surely do with fewer salaried community
workers in exchange for more anti-poverty community
services.
Poverty
is not the crime of parents but is that of society.
Parents should never feel like criminals for not doing
as well as they might otherwise have done were it
not for their destitution. The real criminal culpability
is society’s. And in our society, characterised
by great disparities in wealth and power, those at
the top, not those at the bottom should carry the
mark of Cain for the crime of poverty they have visited
on their brothers and sisters. Unfortunately, they
alone go to bed on Christmas night secure in the knowledge
that a happy new year will be just that.
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