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You can also donate and give - if you can afford it
Photo:
Kseniya Ovchinnikova / Getty Images
In many circles it is now a part of expressing a bit of consumer criticism at Christmas.
On the one hand that is good and right, also this year, in which everything is a little different and then again not everything.
Before the lockdown, it was right to criticize the situation in the crowded shopping malls, it was right to criticize politicians who called for eager shopping in the city centers (and then row back), it is always right to criticize Amazon and its relatives, as long as their business is based on exploitation.
Margarete Stokowski, arrow to the right
Photo:
Rosanna Graf
Born in 1986, was born in Poland and grew up in Berlin.
She studied philosophy and social sciences and has been working as a freelance writer since 2009.
Her feminist bestseller "Bottom Rum Free" was published in 2016 by Rowohlt Verlag.
In 2018, »The Last Days of Patriarchy« followed, a collection of columns from SPIEGEL and »taz«.
All right.
But: consumer criticism can also go wrong.
It is good when it criticizes conditions in which people are more or less forced to consume.
It is good when it criticizes exploitative conditions, overpriced and unsustainable products (or their manufacturers and not the buyers).
She's bad when she just says: Haha, the people who go shopping instead of making everything themselves or donating - how stupid!
If you do it right, giving is an island in capitalism.
It doesn't make sense to generally make fun of people or get upset who get presents just before Christmas, whether offline or online, as if they were the biggest fools in capitalism.
The simple point of view "consumption is bad, donation is good" may feel right at first glance.
But stop, friends of class analysis.
It is not wrong or stupid to give gifts to people at Christmas or other festivals, including expensive or many or cheesy or silly gifts.
If you do it right, giving is an island in capitalism.
In the best case scenario, when giving gifts, the same things happen that would happen in a revolution: redistribution from top to bottom and the satisfaction of needs that have not yet been satisfied and that people may not even have dared to dream of being fulfilled.
On a smaller scale than in a revolution, yes, of course.
For free.
Redistribution may or may not be related to money.
It can refer to skills, for example when one person can knit and the other cannot.
It may be a bit strange to speak of "above and below", but does anyone not know the envy of people who can do more with their hands than you can?
In relation to this relationship, they are then at the top.
Redistribution can also mean that people with time give something they had to look for first, or that people with taste give something away to people who do not know how to furnish their homes or how to dress.
"Everyone according to their abilities, everyone according to their needs," gift expert Karl Marx already knew.
"The present has something to do with being present", writes Susanne Kippenberger in "The Art of Generosity" and that may sound a bit wanted, but it is true.
Giving gifts means seeing that someone can be happy about something.
It is of course also true that this often goes wrong.
“People are forgetting how to give,” wrote Theodor W. Adorno, the grouchy shopper, and completely rightly cursed the “embarrassing invention of gift items”.
But that doesn't mean that people are no longer good at giving gifts.
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Example leak from very good gifts that I have recently received: Painted stones from a child (looked cool, I wouldn't think of doing it myself in private), an embroidered picture by Tove Jansson (one of my favorite artists ), a mobile electric blanket (I didn't even know that it existed), a tea that I thought couldn't be bought anymore, a voucher for a car trip to a certain place.
All very well, and by the way according to Adorno's ideal: "Real giving ... means choosing, spending time, going out of your way, thinking of the other as a subject: the opposite of forgetfulness."
Vouchers can also make you happy
Such a frugal and proud "We don’t give each other anything" one has to be able to afford when in doubt.
“We don’t give each other free gifts” can mean: We’re not making it, there’s too much going on and we stand by it.
It can also mean: everyone has to see where they are, frugality and frugality are, completely baseless, our ideals.
This may be okay for some, but the first thing to remember is that humility can also be bragged about.
And secondly, that some people around them may just be sad and not get anything and don't want to admit it in order not to appear greedy.
This year, many people wrote on social media that you could donate instead of giving.
In view of overwhelmed parcel carriers and closed shops, this is of course a sensible idea.
But if it leads to people donating to a randomly selected organization in order to relieve their conscience, instead of looking in their own environment to see whether there are people who are currently having acute financial worries and who are not necessarily given such a high amount or a gift could relieve some problems, if they accept the help, then it doesn't make quite that sense.
Again Adorno: "For this you practice charity, administered charity, which systematically glues up visible sores in society."
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That doesn't mean you shouldn't donate.
You can also donate and give gifts if you can afford it.
But since many people, at least unconsciously, feel a certain contempt for those who do not have enough money, it is safe to remind them that the misery of inequality is not only far away, but also among us.
Donating a lot and posting the amount on the Internet may initially honor the donor, but when your friends with dire financial worries see it, the honor melts a bit.
Before too high ideals are set here: Even vouchers are not bad in themselves.
They got a bad rap because, in the course of human history, a great many excursions were not taken and food that had been advertised was not cooked.
But vouchers can also make you happy.
Either in the form of cash vouchers because, for example, the opportunity to choose new books in a bookstore is a very good gift for people with little money.
Or in the form of vouchers for things that we will do together when all the plague shit is over, and there are a few things that make you cry at the mere thought.
In this sense, happy giving!