Why I love shoplifting

Nothing compares to the excitement I feel when the burden is lifted and inhibitions melt away as I walk out of the supermarket with their products in my bags. In a world where everything has long since belonged to someone else, where I am expected to sell my life for work so that I can get money to pay for my survival, where I am surrounded by power structures - beyond my control or capacity - in which my well-being or needs are obviously not at stake, it is a way to take a small piece of the world from myself - to influence a world that influences me so much.

This is a completely different sensation than the one I feel when I buy something. When I pay for something. I am conducting an exchange; I am offering my money, which I have bought with my work, my time and my creativity, for a product that the company would not exchange with me under any other circumstances. In a sense, we have a relationship based on violence: we trade and exchange not because of care or respect for each other, but because of the power relations that affect us. Supermarkets know that they can charge me a euro for a loaf of bread because I will starve if I don't buy it; They also know that they can't charge me four euros because then I'll go somewhere else. So our relationship to each other is based on unspoken threats instead of love, and I am forced to give up something of myself in order to get something from them.[^1]

Everything changes if I steal. I no longer trade with faceless, inhuman entities that have no regard for my well-being; instead, I take what I need without giving up anything. I no longer feel forced into a trade-off, and I no longer feel like I have no control over the way the world dictates my life. I no longer have to worry about whether the joy I got from the book I bought was equivalent to the two hours of work it took me to buy it. For these and a thousand other reasons, shoplifting gives me a feeling of freedom and empowerment. Let's explore what shoplifting has to offer as an alternative way of life.

The shoplifter earns her prize by taking risks, not by exchanging a part of her life for it. For them, life is not something that is sold for 4 or 5 euros an hour in order to survive; it is something that belongs to her because she takes it, because she lays claim to it. In stark contrast to the law-abiding consumer, the way in which she acquires products is just as exciting as the products themselves; and this kind is, moreover, in many respects more praiseworthy.

Shoplifting is a rejection of the barter economy. It is a rejection of the idea that people must earn their food, live, and die by how effectively they can exchange their labor and capital with others. It is a rejection of the idea that everything has a monetary value, that a delicious piece of chocolate in your mouth is worth exactly 50 cents, or that an hour in one person's life can be worth 10 euros more than in another person's life. It is a rejection of the capitalist system in which workers have to buy back the products of their own labor - at a profit for those who own capital - that keeps them coming back.

Shoplifting says NO to all the disgusting characteristics that characterize the modern corporation. It is an expression of dissatisfaction with low wages, lack of benefits and the many exploitative companies that force their workers to suffer in the name of profit. It is a refusal to pay for poor quality products that are designed to break or wear out quickly so that customers are forced to buy more. It is a refusal to finance the environmental damage that so many corporations callously commit while producing or building new businesses, a refusal to support the corporations that allow small, regional businesses to go bankrupt, a refusal to accept the murder of animals in the meat and dairy industries and the exploitation of migrants in the fruit and vegetable industries. Shoplifting challenges the alienation of the modern consumer. “If we can’t find or afford products other than these that were made thousands of miles from here and that we can’t know anything about, then we refuse to pay for them.”

The Shoplifter attacks the brainwashing tactics of modern advertising. Today's commercials, billboards, even floor designs and product displays in stores are designed by psychologists to manipulate potential customers.
Companies run elaborate advertising campaigns to get their appeal to consumerism into people's minds - they even work to turn their products into status symbols that people from certain social classes must possess in order to be respected. Confronted with this form of manipulation, the law-abiding consumer has two options: either he/she comes up with the money to purchase these products and sells his/her life through wage labor in return, or he/she abstains and possibly receives public ridicule and becomes personally frustrated. The shoplifter creates a third option for herself: she takes the products to which her desires are directed without paying for them, which means that the corporations themselves have to pay for all their propaganda strategies and brainwashing tactics.

Shoplifting is the most effective protest against all these unpleasant characteristics of modern corporations because it is not just theoretical - it is practical, it involves activity.
Verbal protest can be directed against irresponsible business practices without ever having any real effect, but shoplifting damages these corporations and demonstrates (at least covertly) discontent. It's better than a boycott because it also costs the company money instead of just denying them profits, plus it means the shoplifter gets the products she might need to survive. And today, when so many businesses are interconnected and so many multinational corporations are involved in unacceptable activities, shoplifting is a general protest: it is a refusal to put money into the economy at all, so that the shoplifter can be sure that none of her money will ever end up in the hands of the corporations she doesn't care about. Plus, she'll have to work less for them too!

But what about the people in the corporations? What about your well-being? First of all, corporations differ from traditional private businesses in that they exist as self-contained financial entities independent of their owners. The shoplifter is stealing from a non-human entity, not directly from a human's pocket. Furthermore, since so many workers are paid low wages that depend more on how well the company gets away with paying less than on how much profit it makes, the shoplifter does not harm the workers of any company. The shareholders, who are almost always much richer than the average thief, are the ones who lose something if the company makes significant losses; but realistically, no shoplifting campaign would be strong enough to bankrupt any of the wealthy individuals who truly benefit from these corporations. In addition, modern corporations plan for shoplifting and have cash reserves for losses. It's true - these companies are aware that there is enough dissatisfaction with them and the capitalist economy that they are being robbed relentlessly.

In this respect, shoplifters are just playing their role in society - just like the managers. More importantly, these corporations are cynical enough to carry on like this, even though they know that doing so will result in many of their customers (and employees) stealing all sorts of things from them. If they want to continue their business in this way, and are even aware of how many people they are alienating by doing so, then they should not be surprised that they continue to be robbed.

As for the myth that shoplifting raises prices for the consumer, you don't really believe that the prices you pay are determined by the cost of manufacturing and distribution, do you?

Again, these corporations charge you as much as they think they can get away with. The market determines prices – not your spending. If the money they have set aside for shoplifting losses is not used up, the owners are more likely to keep it for themselves, or invest it in opening new stores (which drives more independent retailers out of the market), than share any of it with their employees, let alone give it back to customers through price reductions. This would free consumers from their constraints and drive them into less global, local businesses. Anyway - does that sound so bad?

Shoplifting is more than just a way of surviving in the cutthroat competition of the “free market” and is a protest against social injustices. It also means a generally different attitude towards the world and life.

The shoplifter has to cope in a world that has been conquered by capitalism and industry, where everything has become private property and where there is no longer a natural world in which humans can collect resources without accepting this absurd way of life.

She takes her life into her own hands and applies an ancient method to the modern problems of survival: she makes a living from urban hunting and gathering. This enables her to live the way her ancestors used to - before the world was subject to technology, imperialism and the irrational needs of the “free” market; and she can find the same challenges and rewards in her work, rewards that are lost to the rest of us these days. For her, the world is as dangerous and exciting as it was in prehistoric humanity: every day she is in new situations - confronted with new risks - she lives by her wits in a constantly changing environment. For the law-abiding consumer, every working day is like the last and danger is missing from life, as is meaning and purpose.

By shoplifting, people affirm immediate physical needs (such as hunger) over abstract moral concepts and other spiritual constructs, which are mostly left over from dying Christianity anyway. Shoplifting strips goods (and the market in general) of the mythical power they seem to have to control the lives of consumers... when goods are occupied by power, they reveal what they really are: nothing but resources held by these corporations through violence and at the expense of everyone else. Shoplifting brings us back to the physical world where things are real, where things are nothing more than their physical properties (weight, taste, ease of acquisition), and where they are not assigned superstitious attributes such as “market value” and “profit margin.” This forces us to take risks and experience life in a new way first hand.

Perhaps shoplifting alone will not be able to overthrow industrial society or the capitalist system... but for now it is one of the best forms of protest and self-empowerment - and one of the most practical too!

Shoplifters of all countries, unite!

Translation from our bookMessage in a bottle