Commodifying the Fetish:
Everyone writes down a kinky fetish on a piece of paper. Preferably it’s their own, but an especially “sensuous” or perverted one is also applicable (zoophilia anyone?). Trade with your neighbor and then act out the sexual perversion you have received while others try to guess, divorced from their own desire, which fetish it is. Drink every time someone cracks a whip or role-plays a “master-slave” relationship.
_“There the products of the human brain appear as autonomous figures endowed with a life of their own, which enter into relations both with each other and with the human race. So it is in the world of commodities with the products of men’s hands.”_ Volume 1: Chapter 1: Section 4
Comparing Use-Value and Exchange Value:
Pick an alcohol (beer, vodka, tequila, etc) and conduct a thought experiment. Drink four to ten glasses of different brands at different price points and rate them. Then blind-fold yourself and re-rate them. If you can read/write at this point, compare your notes.
Did the expensive ones seem more valuable because they cost more? Which, when blindfolded, gave you the most satisfaction? Which would impress your frat brothers more as a status object? Would you trade one bottle of one for two of another? Repeat as many times as necessary.
_“Such properties come into consideration only to the extent that they make the commodities useful, i.e. turn them into use-values. But clearly, the exchange relation of commodities is characterized precisely but is abstraction from their use-values. As use-values, commodities differ above all I quality, while as exchange-values, they can only differ in quantity, and therefore do not contain an atom of use-value.”_ Volume 1: Chapter 1: Section 1
Breaking Capitalist Commodification:
Make Skittles Vodka and then “drink the rainbow,” thereby reclaiming a conventionally manipulative opiate of the masses (high fructose corn syrup + clever children’s advertising) by subverting the status quo and using it for underage drinking.
_“To discover the various use of things is the work of history.”_ Volume I: Chapter: Section 1
Understanding the Circulation of Capital:
Intellectually understand the class antagonism inherent in capitalism, but just not convinced of its inherently cyclical nature? I got you covered. The only material you need (preferably of your own production or exchanged in a flat system of labor exchange) is one baseball bat per person participating.
Opposing teams each select a player. That player fills a cup with twelve ounces of beer, and places it on a table at one end of the room. The player then goes to the other end of the room and awaits a countdown. A third party then counts down and says, “GO!” at which point the players spin clockwise with their foreheads placed against a baseball bat, which is in turn touches the floor. After ten spins, which are counted aloud by their team members, they stand up, cross the room, and chug their beer.
The first team to complete the challenge wins a point, and the next set of competing players play. Spilling beer at any point is considered an immediate loss of preciously allocated resources, and the entire offending team must finish a beer each.
_“In a constantly revolving circle every point is simultaneously a point of departure and a point of return. If we interrupt the rotation, not every point of departure is a point of return.”_ Volume II: Chapter IV: Section 3.
A Way to Get Trashed AND Participate in a Joint-Stock Company:
Want to viscerally understand the variety in input-output in the joint-stock company model, aka one of the foundations for a successful collective society? Look no further. Arrange 70 cups on a side arranged in a rectangle of ten across by seven deep. There are three or four players on a team.
While most cups have the normal one-fifth of a beer each, each team has three “fertile fields” which are cups that have liquor, instead of beer. One is a diamond mine, two are copper mines, and three are cotton fields. A diamond mine is four cups in a row, the copper mines are three cups, and the cotton fields are two cups. Teams pour their natural resources in secret from the other team so that opponents do not know where each other’s supplies are.
Each team member shoots their balls, there are no bring-backs, regardless of how many shots are made. If a beer cup is made, it is removed and drunk. If a resource is hit, the cup is removed, the contents are drunk, and the defending team must declare that a field has been raided, but does not need to declare which one.
If all cups of a resource are hit, the defending team must declare the field has been razed and which one it is. A game is won when all the opponent’s resources have been consumed. No re-racks or bounces allowed.
_“The aggregate capital appears as the capital stock of all individual capitalists combined. This joint stock company has in common with many other stock companies that everyone knows what he puts in, but not what he will get out of it.”_ Volume II: Chapter XX: Section 3
Simulate the Overthrow of the Bourgeoisie and the Proletariat Revolution:
Supplies: like-minded non-bourgeois partiers who want to dismantle the oppressive socio-economic-idealogic status quo. Also, Jenga and copious amounts of alcohol.
Build the Jenga tower. Take a moment to reflect on its symbolism. Then take turns removing a block with one hand. Place the dismantled pieces of oppression on top of the tower, thereby reinforcing the cyclical nature of dominance-oppression reversals. This also shows how the revolution comes from inside the very foundations of the oppressive system that you are, by birth, inscribed inside. If you successfully move a block, according to the rules, everyone else drinks. Solidarity! However, if you cause the tower to topple, you must drink an entire pitcher in celebration of the socialist victory. Shake everyone’s hands and make a toast.
_“All that we want to do away with is the miserable character of this appropriation, under which the labourer lives merely to increase capital, and allowed to live only so far as the interest to the ruling class requires it.”_ Volume II: Section 2, Chapter 4.