Across the street from our tract house in Orlando lived an older man who had everything. He would mow his lawn in front with a push mower, and his larger lawn in back with a riding mower. He would trim his tiny hedge with the trimmers, then weed-whip the rest, then pressure-wash all the toys with his washer, then wash the driveway where the telltale residue of natural ick lay. When he opened his two-car garage, one could see, besides his second car, a jet-ski and trailer, a Hobie cat,  a motorcycle, bikes,-- an endless (and typical)
array of stuff. We never knew his name, because that's the way the neighborhood was- a typical American
bedroom community with little real community at all- and he rarely ever came out unless he was doing stuff with his stuff. This man, and millions like him are -- docile.

Without a hint of state coercion, without draconian police pressure or the threat of a trip to the gulag, they have been rendered impotent. They rock no boats. They rarely meddle with the affairs of their betters, because they are too busy playing with their stuff. Cleaning their stuff, storing it, insuring it, learning how to use it, and above all, busting their ass at work to pay for their stuff.
One day my girls and I went out to the store, to buy stuff (yes, we are not immune), and there it was--the last act. A row of cars in front of his house, with a hearse at the front. His last ride. His epitaph might be:

He who dies with the most toys wins... I won!

The conditions that neoliberalism demands in order to free human beings from the slavery of the state - minimal taxes, the dismantling of public services and social security, deregulation, the breaking of the unions - just happen to be the conditions required to make the elite even richer, while leaving everyone else to sink or swim. In practice the philosophy developed at Mont Pelerin is little but an elaborate disguise for a wealth grab".
George Monbiot

Even the elite succumb to their own bullshit. They themselves think stuff is wealth.
In the empire, the incredibly poor but stuff-soaked empire, the sea we sink in is an ocean of stuff.

Not everyone took to stuff happily. An odd, discordant note in the march to Empire was the widespread public uprising that ended the Viet Nam war. Though practically every sector of the population participated, the vanguard was the young, college educated who came from an odd group- a movement that has been almost erased from our collective memory. I think it would be fair to call them "Young People Against Stuff". They had mostly grown up in privilege, but for some reason a life of stuff lost its appeal. In archetypal form, they were drawn to community more than stuff. So they tended to live sparingly and often collectively; their catalogs were filled with tools (the Whole Earth Catalog) instead of toys and they detested materialism as a way of life. Like the consumer boycott- the most powerful tool ever created in the battle against corporate control- they and their ideas were quickly vilified, branded as unwashed and un-American, their passions and victories deleted from history. In truth, it was these deserters from the world of Stuff that Nixon wished to suppress, with his CoIntelPro. He needen't have bothered-- Madison Avenue and conglomerate media saw the threat, and whipped us like dogs. The Whole Earth Catalog is now --The Sharper Image.

Liberty, Fraternity, Equality. ---Right?

The Empire arrived here in France gradually- not by military force, but by stuff-invasion.

Doing stuff with stuff is mostly a solitary thing-you commune with your toys. Your laptop. Your Blackberry. Your Mp3. -Right? You blog - not WITH the world, but TO the world, with a comfortable filter in between, and the magic off-switch to make it all disappear on command. Stuff emphasizes separateness.

Byby, Fraternity.

Stuff can rule your life. Stuff eats great gouts of time and energy. Stuff, when it becomes the central process of life, eats culture, because there is no time for culture. Or freedom. Risk your job-risk your stuff.

Byby, Liberty

And,--well, we're all equal under stuff--right?

The competition for Stuff is the ultimate tool in the real battle- the battle to control the masses. Neoliberalism and Hayekian crap reveal themselves as not just cash grabbers, but amazing tools. In a world based on competition for stuff, equality is a bad joke, an illusion- as "quaint" as the Geneva conventions are in the world of Gonzales.

Byby, Equality.

 My wife and I watched at least the latter part of the growth of a relentless media-led campaign to teach the same stuff addiction here in France that exists all over America. It has been a very successful campaign, at least partly because teaching "stuff" is pretty easy. It seems to be a clear case of swimming down stream. My wife Joyce made jokes about herself that came from her compulsive acquisition of do-dads and gewgaws, shiny things and trinkets, as being the "crow in me". But we all have this drive, and it's a dangerous handle attached to our souls. Think of the Straussian "noble lies", or the other pander philosophies that oozed out of the Mont Pelerin society and Hayek. In a rational world, their emptiness would be obvious. But they serve as the perfect justification for greed- an endless life of acquisition- as a replacement for community, and they rule our world, at the moment.

We saw at least the last part of the process in the United States. We wrote and we talked, we built our independent communities and farms, our free universities and street schools.
"What if they had a war and--nobody came?"
We got their attention--as would any philosophical movement that called into question the control technology of the elite. We were arrested, evicted and ejected, villainized and accused. Some of us "moved further back", some of us fought and lost. Eventually Joyce and I succumbed to the apparent reality of our powerlessness, and sailed away.
Twenty years later, years of joyous wandering, we came to Paris.

The day Chirac made a deal to sell the French eyeballs to Rupert Murdoch, we knew that the Empire had truly followed us.

Since that time, we have lived in South Africa and the Netherlands, and, even post-Empire, we are still in love with Paris. Like a lover being ravaged by a dread disease, we will not abandon her, because there's life in the old girl yet. We will wiggle our way through the crowds of cell-phone disabled shoppers without crushing anyone, and try to look at the wider picture.
Velib
Velib' is a wonderful idea that reduces the need to own a bicycle, and that seems to work. Clumps of good bicycles on every important corner, a small annual fee, --and--Voila! Less traffic, less pollution, less theft, less cost for the users, wonderful utility. And a little exercise without the need for spandex. And less stuff.
Old, good teachers.
The directrice of Giselle's school, in one of the most upscale areas in Paris still goes out and personally, in violation of all rules and at the risk of her job, canvases the area for potential students to form a representative racial and demographic balance. She said to us, "I don't want to direct a school for spoiled rich kids. No matter what the parents want. They can fire me if they want." And winks.  She is old, gay and communist, and I love her. They won't fire her, because she is superb, and they know it.

Many, many programs to do with recycling and conservation. Among them, this:

www.festivalenvironnement.com

The schools are full of new education in conservation and recycling, the metro is full of new containers, and it is not important whether these actually make a great change, but that they validate the idea of conservation, that conservation is not yet seen here as "losing", as Poverty. That "wealth" transcends "stuff".

Finally,
-What happens to "stuff" as the central technique of social control in a world of global warming? Of a post-peak oil world? Of Junk dollars? Of resource stretch? What happens to the Empire when the Empire's greatest source of power -consuming- is a dead duck?

I think the Empire either dies, or changes greatly. It's that last bit that worries me. I don't think it will die quietly. And no one whom I respect, who has examined the process, sees any combination of forces that might divert the Empire from the relentless pursuit of "stuff".

It's up to us to answer that question, and do something, before it's cast in stone. Paris has taken some good steps.