How nice it is to go struggling and grasping for things

Giotto: Expulsion of the Money-Changers

In an article contributed to Art Futures (2010) Bernard Stiegler summarizes Marx's view of labour ... "With general proletarianisation, human knowledge is short-circuited as a result of its technological reproduction and implementation," and then sets out how consumerism takes the disenfranchisement to another level: "In the consumerist model it is not only the know-how (savoir-faire) of workers that becomes obsolete, but also the knowledge of how to live (savoir-vivre) of citizens, who thus become as such mere consumers a good consumer is both utterly passive and irresponsible."

"Consumerism tries to bind consumers and make them submit by producing dependence, that is, addiction". But we have been in this bind a long time. In his 1909 book Jakob von Gunten, Robert Walser observes: "Man hat es hier allgemein eilig, weil man jeden Augenblick der Meinung ist, es sei hübsch, etwas erkämpfen und erhaschen zu gehen. " ...  "There is such a general hurry here because people think every moment how nice it is to go struggling and grasping for things."