axiomas

flag for an organisation for whom the following is axiomatic:

1. that western society is based upon envy engendered by publicity
2. that publicity works upon anxiety: the sum of everything is money, to get money is to overcome anxiety
3. that the anxiety on which publicity plays is the fear that having nothing you will be nothing
4. that under capitalism money is life
5. that under capitalism money is the token of, and the key to, every human capacity
6. that under capitalism the power to spend money is the power to live
7. that publicity speaks in the future tense and yet the achievement of this future is endlessly deferred. it is judged, not by the real fulfilment of its promises, but the relevance of its fantasies to those of the spectator-buyer. its essential application is not to reality but to daydreams
8. that glamour cannot exist without personal social envy being a common and widespread emotion
9. that the industrial society has moved towards democracy and then stopped half way
10. that the industrial society is an ideal society for generating personal social envy
11. that the pursuit of individual happiness has been acknowledged as a universal right
12. that existing social conditions make the individual feel powerless
13. that in the existing social conditions, the individual lives in the contradictions between what he is and what he would like to be
14. that the individual can either (14a) become fully conscious of the contradiction between what he is and what he would like to be and its causes, or else (14b) he lives, continually subject to an envy which, compounded with his sense of powerlessness, dissolves into recurrent daydreams
15. that 14a entails joining the political struggle for a full democracy which itself entails among other things the overthrow of capitalism
16. that the process of living within the contradictions of present social conditions is often reinforced by working conditions
17. that the interminable present of meaningless working hours is ‘balanced’ by a dreamt future in which imaginary activity replaces the passivity of the moment
18. that only one kind of hope or satisfaction or pleasure can be envisaged within the culture of capitalism: the power to acquire is recognised to the exclusion of everything else
19. that the dream of capitalism is publicity
20. that capitalism survives by forcing the majority, whom it exploits, to define their (sic) own interests as narrowly as possible
21. that the survival of capitalism was once achieved by extensive deprivation. today in the developed countries it is being achieved by imposing false standards of what is and what is not desirable
22. that publicity is the life of this culture insofar as without publicity capitalism could not survive
23. that it is desirable that people come to consciousness of these false standards
24. that they should be assisted in doing so (23)

art & language, "flags for organisations: list of axioms", 1978 (documenta, kassel)