The End of Protest (Pt 2)

(2)Continuing the theme of protesting, next time you march in a protest look around you, are the individuals there because they believe in the cause or are they getting paid to do a job. Yes, a job! Well apparently the expansive commodification of reality has hit a new low, with a German company finding the uncommodified niche of protesting and turning it into a profit-oriented activity. “Good-looking protestors can help an organization get its political message to the public for as little as €145 a day.”

Talk about the end of protest and the growing commodification of rebellion. Protest as a form of political action has waned in the western world, particularly the U.S. since the 1960s and 70s, but now protesting as a job, this is another low for capitalism. Turning another activity that historically has been relatively spontaneous and a manifestation of the autonomous struggle for power by the downtrodden into work, into a profit orientated activity. That is the goal of capital, to enforce work and the commodity form upon individuals, as this is the only way it can realize surplus-value (profit). Without commodities capital cannot accumulate capital. Additionally, these pseudo protestors are not down for the cause nor will they be militant long-term followers willing to be engaged in the movement. They are merely the entry-level short-term temporary functionaries in a bureaucratized organization that is attempting to grab a little bit of the cheese from the system.

This is just another step in the dominance of one-dimensional thought and the decline of protest. Now actual protest of the system strengthens the system, through its commodification no longer is protest commodified solely into consumption [which can be seen as labor/work designed to strengthen the domination of capital], but now actual protest is commodified into work. Capital will not let any activity not be commodified or fall outside the system. Capital must commodify all productive and consumptive relative activities, productive for the creation of surplus value and consumptive for the realization of surplus value.