The Consumariat: devoted to consumtion

(Extract from Gian Piero de Bellis's Polyarchy : a Manifesto)

The increase in productivity through the introduction of more effective means and modes of production has led to an increase in output. Over time, the state has become, on a grandiose scale, the controller and allocator of this massive production. And here resides the cunning of statism. With the introduction of welfare it has produced a revised and updated version of the old provision of panem et circenses to the Roman plebs. Its aims are identical: to manipulate the masses in order to win their favour. State welfare has become the path towards mass wares-fare, the ever-increasing consumption of goods which, in time, dulls the senses and destroys the critical mind. The proletariat has been replaced by the consumariat, a crowd of consumption-addicted people ready to follow any fad and any craze, whose sole aim in life is to swallow anything, any time, anywhere. The original sentiment of compassion that was at the basis of the welfare provision has led to corruption via consumption.

Welfare parasitism and ever-escalating levels of consumerism have also acted as a barrier to the progressive shortening of the working hours. This because a growing mass of superfluous goods is expected from a shrinking number of workers, instead of useful and fruitful activities being shared by everybody.

The two associated/antagonistic groups (entrepreneurs and workers) that represented the dynamic of capitalism, have been largely replaced under statism by two mutually supporting groups that feed off each other: the distributor and the recipient of state benefits. An increase in the numbers of the second group (recipients) requires an increase in the first group (distributors). So it is a bonanza for both of them, as long as it lasts. Welfare has truly become the worstfare of late statism, the programmed fabrication of a lost and wretched humanity.

From cradle to grave or, rather, from pristine innocence to moral death: what a devious work of castration and corruption done in the name of care and compassion!