Some Notes on Shopping, Socialism and Self-Efficacy, or Socialism or Barbyism

“We’ve become a nation measuring out our lives in shopping bags and nursing our psychic ills through retail therapy.” (Mary Schmich, Chicago Tribune, Christmas, 1986)

On returning home to Edinburgh, after my somewhat desultory wanderings afar for some years, I found some of its districts, historic and otherwise, crammed with charity shops. Most were squeezed between struggling businesses, run-down café chains and shuttered premises bearing faded To Let signs. Princes Street, once renowned for its grand department stores, was now populated with pound stores, tartan tourist trash, vaping joints, a whisky tabernacle, phone repair outlets, American tooth-rotting supermarkets, row upon row of cheap and ugly signage, and boarded premises that serve as a canvas for bad graffiti artists. The Street itself is only one mile, but a mile of mounting neglect, and combined with the people begging on the streets spaced just yards apart, it is a mile that reveals in microcosm the larger problems that need to be addressed — physically, morally and aesthetically. Meanwhile, the quality shops, for want of a better term, continue to move steadily to the insulated shopping malls, most recently the St James Quarter at the far end of Princes Street.

There is a parallel story in Glasgow, where shopping malls such as the Buchanan Galleries and also Princes Square — sold for an undisclosed sum in 2024 to a gang of investors — were developed at the expense of major areas of the town, such as the once famous but latterly run-down Sauchiehall Street. Most of the cities I’ve visited around the world, rich and impoverished, have equivalences. Offering protection from the heat, the cold, the poor and the mad, they drain energy, diminish neighbourhoods and provide an immense source of increased wealth for the already rich. Like its sisters across the globe, one can assuredly enter the St James Quarter in Edinburgh without encountering people at the bottom of the pile. There are no street beggars or chuggers here, no shadow boxers or drunks screaming madness amid the throng of worshipful shoppers, no drug addicts in dark, deathly corners, no rough sleepers curled up in urine-scented shop doorways, no litter, graffiti or dog poop. It is warm and clean. 

The oasis that is the St James Quarter (see Shitting in the Cathedral) had its origins in what was once a haphazard conglomeration of dystopian architecture known as St. James Centre. Billionaire investors, asset managers, developers and private contractors saw the chance to further increase their fortunes, and in a period spanning five years, it was revamped, resurrected and rebranded as the St James Quarter. It is now a major galleria with luxury cinema, upmarket shops, elegant restaurants, plush offices, an opulent hotel with a distinctive wiggly bit on the skyline, and grand residential apartments. Even the full stop after the abbreviation was rendered obsolete, as though it were a blemish on this temple of consumerism and illusory pleasures. With the high-end shops abandoning our streets for this glistening dome, some might say monstrosity, several acres in central Edinburgh were dramatically transformed into an exclusive enclave for the shopping and dining experience.

Erich Fromm said the world is mad, yet we are considered sane for conforming to it. As if to demonstrate the lasting truth of this apophthegm [a concise saying or maxim; an aphorism, Ed] , in September 2022 HRH Princess Royal and her escutcheons were wheeled out and paraded through the temple to a passionate public huzzah. If you build it they will come, runs the business mantra, and come they did, responding to the boasts of an all-but-infinite supply of food, drink and designer labels. How this alternative reality was loved. I watched crowds exploring the mall, squirting themselves with perfume testers at the blindingly bright shop counters, mesmerised by ever-larger plasma screen televisions with mind-numbing programmes and ludicrous presenters, looking enviously at patio furniture, outrageously priced coffee-makers, crippling shoes and big fat sofas with footstools. I wondered if the vast majority would always worship symbols of prestige, would always fantasise about obscene amounts of money, would always be so easily bought. How far from socialism were they, and what could it possibly mean to them — was it just more money and free time in which to spend it? How far were they from forming questions about emancipatory politics, about freedom from desire, about meaningful existence?

It was difficult to imagine those same people being capable of resolute political action, but just outside this temple a megaphonic representative of the Scottish Socialist Party was pacing the pavement with somewhat higher hopes. At maximum volume he asked people, repetitively, to send a message to the government by signing a petition against fuel poverty, cuts to public services, and the privatisation of our hospitals. Even if those conditions were met, I doubted his chances of reducing people’s desire for wealth and prestige, that basic drive in our psyche nurtured within capitalism and blocking the possibility of equality. But then he wasn’t trying to. 

The current enemy was some leaderships or other operating within the exigencies of a system bent on favouring the few, and the proposed solution was some other leadership, some other list of vague promises within the context of ever-resilient capitalism. Back in the 1970s the psychologist, Albert Bandura, found that people who developed, or worked on developing, a sound sense of self-efficacy — a person’s self-belief in their ability to master challenges and to behave in ways compatible with achieving their goals and personal well-being — were more able to control situations that were otherwise considered threatening or indeed immutable. Sadly, signing that petition — which even one of the people gathering signatures admitted to me was ultimately pointless, but justified it on the basis that the act of signing gives people the feeling that they have done something positive for change — would not bring us remotely close to that level of consciousness.

It is in some ways ironic, but ultimately tragic, that many of those seeking pleasure or comfort from shopping, together with those who engage in compulsive buying, self-verifying consumption, and binge purchasing — young Scots rating among the highest in Europe — are on a spectrum of addiction, not so unlike the evenly-spaced-out addicts with their paper cups, tents and sleeping bags beyond the mall wall. It seems to me that there are lessons to learn from psychology for social change. The terms we often hear and more frequently hope for, investors and developers, shouldn’t be the preserve of vague groups of profiteers and monopolists who influence the distribution of wealth and desire across society, but terms we monopolise and apply to ourselves.

If socialism means worker’s control, it seems reasonable to suggest that we should at the very least try to make the effort to reach optimal levels of personal control and self-efficacy, the latter being the belief in one’s ability to change events, to struggle against exploitation, and to resist the temptations of advertising and constantly buying unnecessary stuff. It doesn’t begin with the promises of leaders, few of whom remain loyal to socialist aspirations once in power (at the moment I cannot think of one, living or dead), but with ourselves. It must involve a transformation at the level of individual psychology, one where we question the meaning, purpose and personal control of desire, and where we strive to gain a heightened awareness of meaningful existence.

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