OBJECTION!
Slop.I thought the large amount of comments would be because of some lib that had wandered in to get dunked on, but it seems it's just nerds discussing theory .
I get a kick out of the Ace Attorney “objection!” avatar too - helps break up the dialogue. But yeah this has been a good nerd thread
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The devil can cite Scripture for his purpose.
Kropotikin? Least problematic theorist of that generation Kropotikin? The guy so likeable that the famously anti Anarchist Vladimir Lenin declared a ceasefire so Anarchists could attend his state funeral Kropotikin? Ending serfdom Kropotikin? Wife guy Kropotikin?
Child labor is like the least Kropotikin thing I can imagine.
That comment doesn't hold up to basic critical thinking.
If writing off the loss is the same to a capitalist as selling the product, there would be no incentive for the capitalist to sell it, because that involves more complications than just claiming the write-off. By necessity, any writeoff that is equal or greater than the sale value of the product will result in companies limitlessly scamming the government (or insurance). It follows that spoiled or stolen product is some degree of loss to the company.
"The capitalist still wins" is equating larger wins to smaller wins.
I predict and have priced in the chance that the money line either goes to 0 or 1 million. Therefore anything that happens means that I win because it's according to keikaku
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Read Kropotkin
For the people who haven't read the bread book, Kropotkin makes arguments against child labor starting in the first chapter. He says that it is unfair that children of capitalists receive inheritance but the labor of the worker is inherited by the capitalist. That is unfair that children of workers have to work in the factory starting at the age of 13. Throughout the book, he says that children should not work in factories or mines. He says that children should receive meals from the society for free. In chapter 4, he talks about how artisans take advantage of working class children through apprenticeships (ie internships) by paying them less than the value their labor produces. In chapter 12, he talks about how capitalists would rather employ children than grown adult because children are willing to be payed less, which causes grown men to be jobless. He says the use of child labor makes society into a joke.
You obviously missed the footnote where he said it doesn't count if the kids are brown, far away, and the stuff they're making is really tasty.
he talks about how capitalists would rather employ children than grown adult because children are willing to be payed less, which causes grown men to be jobless. He says the use of child labor makes society into a joke.
MAGA wondering how to deport children
read Kropotkin
Its very funny that they used Kropotkin instead of Marx, who actually opposed banning child labour
Just so this isn’t left hanging, from my understanding he was against child labor in the conditions of factory labor. The extent that he supported child labor, it was something like apprenticeship alongside education. Maybe not even “work” properly so called, but productive labor nonetheless. It is in line with the general belief of communists that labor is not inherently exploitative, but that under capitalist conditions, it becomes exploitative. Communists are pro-labor, labor as a fundamental human activity, something that can be positive. Hence for example the massively misrepresented Soviet labor camps, which basic idea is that consciousness is derived from practice; therefore you enforce a reformed practice in order to produce a reformed consciousness.
As I understand it, Marx advocated for children to continue working in factories, under capitalism, as useful for changing society. I agree that eventually socialism and communism will abolish work (wage-labour) and create factories very different to todays factories, but I dont think its relevant to what marx is talking about when he opposes banning child labour in e.g.
Critique of Gotha Programme:
A general prohibition of child labor is incompatible with the existence of large-scale industry and hence an empty, pious wish. Its realization -- if it were possible -- would be reactionary, since, with a strict regulation of the working time according to the different age groups and other safety measures for the protection of children, an early combination of productive labor with education is one of the most potent means for the transformation of present-day society.
Where he talks about the abolition of child labour as reactionary, even in 1870s germany. He isnt advocating children working just in the future communism, but as inevitable under capitalism and anyways beneficial for changing society
From a purely consequentialist viewpoint, any boycott does fuck all to actually affect material change. Even collective boycotts aren't as effective as advertised. However, you do not have to adopt a consequentialist ethics on the level of the individual. I would argue that virtue ethics makes much more sense because at the end of the day, socialists need to convince and onboard new socialists and nobody's going to want to become socialists if the current stock of socialists can't exert basic discipline like abstaining from chocolate that doesn't even taste that good.
"You hate capitalism, yet you use iPhone. Curious." is an argument that reactionaries make, but most people who aren't socialists are swayed by this on some level. That's literally why reactionaries keep on making that stupid argument. Because it works. They don't make the same argument with cars because average people (from the US) see cars as something essential for daily life while iPhones are seen as a luxury item. The argument is "you hate capitalism, but you use nonessential commodities that wouldn't exist without capitalism, so how can you criticize capitalism while enjoying the fruits of capitalism that is not essential for daily life?"
Nobody wants to sign up to join a political movement steered by a bunch of hypocritical losers who can't exert a basic level of discipline. To use chocolate as an example, US-made chocolate doesn't even taste that good. It's like, I'm not going to take your calls for class warfare seriously if you can't even abstain from eating vomit-tasting chocolate. You bozos aren't going to be embarking on the Long March anytime soon.
People just have this knee-jerk reaction where because ethical consumption doesn't solve the core problem, they go to the opposite extreme of "just do whatever."
Well, voting ain't gonna fix things, but if someone comes in here talking about voting for Kamala, they'd still be called a lib. For the average American, not even living in a swing state, buying a single carton of Sabra is going to have more tangible material impact than their vote. Neither has the potential to actually solve things, but it's important to have a correct party line in one case but not the other?
I brought up the example of someone not giving up chocolate even as they're doing a publicity campaign against the company, and I guess people might see that as a "gotcha." But the point is that it breaks through this knee-jerk reaction. "Ethical consumption doesn't solve things so just do whatever - unless it directly undermines a cause you're organizing for." Is that the only exception, or is there a more general standard we should be considering?
In my head the route back into the game after the US government bombed the shit out of labor comes from moments of consequence. It's like that Onion article where their plan is to just sit back and do nothing. Not that there's nothing to do, but if you're pinned down in a fight, you don't just beast your way back up, you wait for them to shift their weight and mess up to take advantage of it. If you have an ideology as dogwater as capitalism that only works down the barrel of a rifle then you're always going to have contradictions and moments of crisis that move the super structure or "shift their weight from pinning you".
So yeah, today all you can do is abstain from Sabra, you're pinned to the mat! But when the US neglects to man 10 military bases, the US war plans go on the black market for 50 Bitcoin, guerilla gardening starts to threaten cash crops, or some random madlib crisis happens then suddenly you are able to help push the super structure in a big way.
To that end, the Trueanon creed of just be normal seems very helpful. Wokescold works against this wincon, hypocrisy works against this wincon, not being easy to engage with works against this wincon, not being willing or able to explain leftism works against this wincon, and not finding the other people with hope for a future worth sticking around for works against this wincon. Because if something ever happens and there's a big swell of people who get the memo then suddenly you go from being pinned to having their back on the mat in kind.
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The only proper way to support child labor is if you consider studying to be work
chores are work
Ain't THAT the truth
isn't it reproductive labor? IIRC work is paid and the end of the labor done is to make more money for the employer, chores aren't necessarily paid and the labor is to maintain conditions to live.
Marx argues extensively that 'wages' are the amount required to reproduce the worker, and that capitalist exploitation is the difference between the value created by the worker and the value (wage) needed to reproduce the worker. This reproduction includes the usual suspects; housing, clothing, food, kids^[reproducing a constant supply of future workers as well as supplement reproductive labor], etc -- but also learning and practice^[Marx describes this as intensifying labor-power] that are required to perform that job, like a Doctor or a Nuclear engineer. At the same time, if the wages dip below the necessary reproductive cost it degrades the worker's ability to work. Marx even points out that if workers didn't require a wage (and thus could reproduce themselves freely) they would also never need to work!^[John Stewart Mill: "If labour could be had without purchase, wages might be dispensed with." Karl Marx: "But if the labourers could live on air they could not be bought at any price. The zero of their cost is therefore a limit in a mathematical sense, always beyond reach..." Capital v1c24s4]
Not the person you responded to but i used labor and work interchangeably
I'd say it's labor, but not wage labor, and it's work, but not if you define work to be wage labor
Some reproductive labor is paid.
the ought to be paid, and some of them are about abuse not living
Obviously people should stop buying meat, Israeli goods, items produced with child labor etc to the best if their abilities and it is extremely silly to imply otherwise, smacking of treatlerite tendencies. However as folks have pointed out individual consumption choices are not the political mechanism which will bring down child labor/Zionism/meat farming. Therefore going on endlessly about individual consumption habits instead of encouraging some kind of collective action or actually effective intervention also comes across as performative and deeply unserious. Some one who eats an occasional cheeseburger and blows up a slaughterhouse is objectively a better vegan than someone who never touches a cheeseburger and doesn't blow up a slaughterhouse.
Hard disagree. Eating meat and blowing up a slaughterhouse undermines the image and makes it look like you just wanted to blow something up. If you want to get public support, you should at least make a token effort towards nonviolent tactics even if you don't expect anything from them. This is one of the reasons Lenin argued for participation in bourgeois elections (in a communist party ofc).
you should at least make a token effort towards nonviolent tactics
Nothing in my comment in any way detracts from nonviolent tactics. I support collective action and effective direct interventions in all shapes and sizes. Also, blowing up something is only violent if it is occupied when you blow it up (or if it is empty because of the threat to blow it up). It is important not to conflate property destruction with violence
Correct, which is why we shouldn't blow up the occupants, human or otherwise.
individual slaughterhouse explosions don't really have an impact you have to get a group together and blow up enough slaughterhouses that they stop rebuilding them.
"Hi, I really care about animal rights so I'm putting together a group to blow up some slaughterhouses! Oh but I'm not vegan, meat just tastes too good and it's too much effort there's no ethical consumption under capitalism anyway, amirite?"
i was riffing on the inefficacy of individual action, not fedposting
Adventurism is ineffectual fedposting. Individual action is the atomic unit of collective action.
Individual action is the atomic unit of collective action.
no it isn't. you cannot add up individual actions and get a collective action. 10 people doing something each by themselves is fundamentally different than those same people doing it together as a group.
As collectives consist of individuals, so too do collective actions consist of individual actions. The group does the organizing but the members show up.
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Vegans should not blow up slaughterhouses. That would harm the animals inside.
well i mean, i dont think theyre making it out of there anyways…
That would be up to us
how do animal releases usually go for the released animals and local wildlife?
Are we really doing outdoor cats?
if you're breaking into peoples' homes to let the cats outside i guess
I do not recommend doing that.
that would be cool
I'm beginning to feel a bit embarrassed at myself now for eating chocolate if it means I'm in the same boat as this person
There are brands that claim to be child labor and slavery free
boycotts are a useful tool in concert with an organized political movement (like BDS or a union of striking workers) but can be ultimately counterproductive on their own:
In short, a strong belief that ethical consumption will lead to ethical practices is not warranted – purchasing as voting is a weak feedback mechanism at best and there are other actors who are able to influence the system. The danger, however, comes in believing that this mechanism can make substantial political change. Ethical consumption gives the individual the illusion of contributing to progress; of “doing their part” by making purchasing decisions. This illusion can detract, and probably has detracted, from trying to put forward an avowedly political agenda that seeks to mobilise people collectively to make the changes they support. Instead, it individualises ethics, it individualises politics and it reaffirms us as consumers rather than citizens – it is a part of the profit-maximising, pathologically-externalising neoliberal market system that has caused many of the problems ethical consumerism seeks to alleviate, rather than being an alternative.
In short, a strong belief that ethical consumption will lead to ethical practices is not warranted
Nor does it have anything to do with my position.
It really is frustrating to see true things trotted out as a defense of undeniably shitty behavior. There are two facts (that people who are aware of how exploitative capitalism is) will use to argue that any consumption is fine, that their personal consumption of certain deeply unethical products isn't problematic, or that there isn't a spectrum from mostly fine to inherently problematic consumable commodities.
One: there is no ethical consumption under capitalism. Two: attempts at ethical consumption alone will never be sufficient to affect real change (and may mislead some into thinking they've done their part when they haven't). These things are true. But just because they are, that does NOT mean that all consumption is the same, and it doesn't mean that consuming certain things isn't a form of tacit but still supportive approval of the worst kinds of exploitation. It very much is just mental acrobatics that some people will use to justify their hypocrisy and stamp out the feelings of guilt for consuming shit that deep down they know they should feel guilty about consuming.
OOP is using fact one to do this. And I don't think miz is meaning to, but in the context of this post, reminding people of fact 2 without further explanation comes across as if it's backing up OOP's flawed "logic."
one day, we are going to have to boycott everything
total disengagement from the economy, purchasing strike, using the remaining degree of advantageous position that workers/debtors/consumers have in the postindustrial economy, relying on direct production for use to survive, while overpowering the capacity of the economy to punish us
But we can't create a second economy that protects everyone, including our disabled comrades, without maintaining our access to the vast and irreplaceable industrial machinery and supply chains of the world.
We must take this economy.
Another example of how the colonial situation dehumanizes the colonized and the colonizer.
Colonizers can only look down on anyone that would personally not want to eat chocolate harvested with child labor. Even if it won't change anything, even if it's individualism with no hope of stopping child labor, we still dehumanize ourselves when we participate.
It looks like the person is saying that boycotting chocolate produced by child labor is not an effective way of ending child labor, which is correct, especially in the case where the child labor produced the raw cacao and the finished chocolates are made in another country.
That doesn't justify buying it. "No ethical consumption under capitalism" is not a "get out of responsibility" card that you can use to justify whatever you feel like, which is exactly how they're using it.
You're making an idealist argument that somehow, despite your choice having literally no material impact that the choice still matters. That's pure moralizing.
I know we're all raised to believe in morality like this, but it's quite useless. I was not immoral for being raised in America on stolen land, nor were my parents, or their parents. We shouldn't have been in that situation, and we should have been dispossessed of our property and made to participate in reconciliation and reparations to the people we displaced, but that wasn't an option because our historical context does not allow for that to be an individual choice. I can't fix that problem with my choice to live or not live in a home on stolen land. In fact, I can do a lot more good living on stolen land and using my privilege to collaborate with the indigenous peoples and first nations to bring about the conditions of their liberation than I can by living under a bridge or self-deporting.
You say "get out of responsibility" like somehow consuming chocolate where the original cacao was harvested by child laborers is literally something one can respond to by making purchasing choices. But the point is that one does not have responsibility of this sort. The responsibility is towards the child, not the transaction, and the transaction does not help nor harm the child, as articulated by that poster. The child is no better off simply because one feels guilt or shame at their purchases, and no better off simply because some people who consume something get shamed or harassed by others. The child will be better off when the system of unequal exchange is shutdown in that particular sector, and we all have a responsibility to shut that system down. Not buying candy doesn't have any effect on that. Private boycotts do not have material consequences. Big loud public ones sometimes do. But if one actually cares about child labor in the cacao industry, one's personal moral choices about consumpitare not universalizable and one's personal responsibility is almost entirely orthogonal to one's personal consumption habits.
You’re limiting the impact purchases have to only companies choosing to adopt more ethical labor practices. This ignores that the scale of the industry matters, and is affected by consumption. If consumers quietly started buying 50% less chocolate, companies would continue to exploit child laborers, but the amount of unethical labor that the industry could bear would be reduced.
You’re claiming to have the materialist position, but you’re ignoring that the commodities embody child labor. The idea of “voting with your wallet” is capitalist bullshit, and market trends will not transmit ethics to ceos. But there is an unbreakable link between the consumption of commodities and the labor used to make them. It doesn’t matter whether the consumers are organized, what their intent is, or if the companies are even aware of what’s happening.
Whatever buying a chocolate bar does or doesn’t say about a person’s morals, you can’t claim that it’s disconnected from the people who produced it. There are plenty of reasons why the relationship is not one to one, but you can’t make a materialist argument that raw cacao has nothing to do with finished chocolate products.
This ignores that the scale of the industry matters, and is affected by consumption. If consumers quietly started buying 50% less chocolate, companies would continue to exploit child laborers, but the amount of unethical labor that the industry could bear would be reduced.
This is literally impossible based on individual consumer choice. The chocolate industry has been developed over centuries of colonial exploitation. There are entire bodies of law governing just chocolate. Whether I or you or my neighbor is browbeat into not buying specific brands of chocolate could never reach even a 10% impact on the industry. That's never how boycotts have been effective. They are effective because they are publicly organized, very loud, and do serious reputational harm to brands and to politicians. That is to say, people had to organize to make the consequences of staying the course worse than changing course. Quiet personal morality doesn't rise to that standard.
there is an unbreakable link between the consumption of commodities and the labor used to make them. It doesn’t matter whether the consumers are organized, what their intent is, or if the companies are even aware of what’s happening.
But now you are ignoring scale. You are correct that the link is there. But you fail to recognize that even if you managed to get an entire village to stop buying those chocolates, if you didn't propagate the ideas and create a movement, your village would not even factor into the economics. There are entire counties where certain chocolates have not yet managed to establish market penetration. Losing a village of 10,000 consumers wouldn't be noticed, unless someone realized that there was some propaganda that was effective in shutting down purchasing behavior and became worried about that propaganda spreading to other locations and creating large scale problems in the future.
This is why loud boycotts sometimes win. Not because they actually hit the bottom line but because they create interest convergence whereby the people who have both the financial incentive to use child labor and the power to choose otherwise become aware that choosing otherwise has become more inline with their financial incentives. This does not happen because half the world just stops buying chocolate because of a personal moral code. It happens because a successful propaganda campaign was demonstrated to be highly effective in a small context which creates the threat of becoming highly effective in a larger context. Capitalism behaves in such a way that it will never need to reach 50% of buying behavior because by the time you have demonstrated you have an effective propaganda campaign the investors are already reallocating capital to maintain their profits.
And we've seen what doesn't work - atomizing people, ostracizing them, browbeating strangers with whom we have no relations, etc. These are the tools of oppressors. These are the tools of religious missionaries in a colonial project. We can directly moralize with people we have existing relationships with. With people we don't have relationships with, it's almost always counter productive. Instead, building relationships with more people is how we get to the position where we can engage in moral discourse with more people. Connect first, then educate, then make demands. Not the other way around.
you can’t make a materialist argument that raw cacao has nothing to do with finished chocolate products.
I never did. I simply said that the choices of an individual consumer cannot impact child labor practices and that moralizing about it won't do it either and that there is evidence spanning over a century that supports this position and also evidence that illuminates what does work and why.
I agree with you that pressuring people to change individual purchasing decisions is not a good strategy, or a good use of someone's time, and that there are better approaches to reach the same goal. My point is that you're taking the factors that limit a person's ability to exert their consumer choices, and making a leap to say that the consumer has no material impact on the world. That doesn't make much difference for the moral implications of this issue, but it's anti-materialist, and it gets in the way of understanding how the world operates.
The chocolate industry has built a machine of cruelty that controls governments, and has continued for hundreds of years despite all the people it has immiserated and motivated to fight against it. No one is going to take it down by putting a candy bar back on the shelf at the grocery store. And yet, the industry is the size that it is, and no larger. If the capitalists had their way, it would be ten times bigger, and then ten times bigger next year. It's limited by material factors, including the fact that people will only buy so much of the finished product. Marketing, lobbying, mercenaries, etc. are all tools that companies use to push against those limits, but the fact is even someone who doesn't give a shit about labor practices, and puts five cases of chocolate bars in their cart before deciding they only really need four, is participating in limiting how many child laborers cacao companies are capable of exploiting.
The impact that any one person, or the handful of people one person could recruit, can have on overall consumption is very small compared to the global population, but those minuscule changes do propagate through the system of production and exchanges. You can't be a communist and not believe that tiny contributions can add up to meaningful change. Organizing and coordinating those contributions is far more important than any one individual, and it's good to emphasize that and redirect to it, but that can't be done by dismissing that the small changes matter at all.
You make a good case for why the focus shouldn't be on moralizing specific consumer choices, and why the products someone buys says little about them in comparison to the impact they could have in other areas. You're going to have to rely on the strength of those arguments because, while it would be nice if we could fully absolve ourselves by saying that the commodities we buy have exactly zero impact on the world, it isn't true.
You're right. It's too strong a claim to say that individual consumption has zero effect on the economics. The better claim is that an individual choosing to stop consuming something has no material effect on child labor. It has a material effect on a specific quantity of product purchased in specific location during a specific time period. That quantity is not directly tied to the amount of child labor consumed. The economic system has layers upon layers of buffers between the consumer and the child laborer and the individual choices would need to build to point where they can have a material impact on the first buffer before they can have an impact anywhere else.
This is why the actual effective boycotts are about demonstrating power, not about actually causing a mass quantitative change through changes in consumption. The ability to do it deliberately and in a focused way demonstrates effective organizing that could be used at a mass scale, and thus the capitalists are required to meet the demands of the boycotters in order to prevent them from actually wielding that power to do mass economic damage.
It's NOT the individual choices that make this change, though individual choice has a role to play as discussed elsewhere. It's the ability to organize and demonstrate the power of the organization that makes this change. It has nothing to do with the actual loses of profit and everything to do with the risk of future losses of profit.
You're still making a distinction where there isn't one. The capitalist system has enough layers, buffers, and complexities that trying to quantitatively study the impact of any one transaction becomes impossible after a few steps, but that doesn't mean its impact is zero. Individual choices need to build up to a certain point to have enough impact on a layer to be measured statistically if you're looking to write a paper about it, but there is no actual threshold that prevents small changes from being passed down the production chain. The layers of the economy are not static objects held in place by friction unless shoved by a big enough force. They are an ongoing response that aggregates all of the interactions that feed in to them. They often don't respond efficiently, effectively, or ethically like the propaganda says they should, but they are responsive. The global economy is made up of all the individual transactions, it's not a separate entity that is insulated from all but the biggest market trends.
The chain connecting consumers to child exploitation involves many individual decisions that are generally too big to be affected by one chocolate bar purchase. Hersey's decision of how many tons of ingredients to buy from their suppliers will be rounded to some whole number, so the amount they buy next year is unlikely to be changed by a slight difference in sales numbers this year. But there necessarily has to be some tipping point where any more loss of sales will cause them to cut their order. Although rare, a small number of specific purchases will have a hugely exaggerated effect. For this purpose, the vast scale of the global economy compared to an individual provides a very high number of avenues where a small change can potentially have a unexpectedly large outcome. The bigger the market, the more avenues, and the more transparent the layers are to propagating the impact of the transaction.
Buying one chocolate bar statistically has a direct impact on the extent of child labor in the world. There's no way to know which specific chocolate bars may trigger small tipping points in companies along the line choosing to adjust their production up or down slightly, but every single chocolate bar purchase plays a role in maintaining the child labor used by the industry.
None of this means that buying chocolate is morally equivalent to owning child slaves. The impact of buying a chocolate bar on child labor is incredibly small, and almost any political activism a person does would be far more meaningful, but there is no material basis to say that the end products are disconnected from the workers who made them. The only reason to double down on claiming that is out of moral discomfort.
This is literally impossible based on individual consumer choice.
Boycotts are by definition not about individual consumer choice, but rather encouraging collective action to reduce consumption in a measurable way. They are one of many tools in our toolkit that cannot simply be discarded because that alone will solve the issue. Diversity of tactics is necessary.
I'm not engaging further in this argument. I am not open to having my mind changed that lines of logic like, "I personally oppose the institution of slavery, but freeing my own slaves won't do anything to fix the systemic problem so I'm not going to do it" have any validity whatsoever. You and them are both dead wrong, likely because of chauvanism and privilege.
Tell it to someone else.
You're going to have a hard time forming a coherent political position if you can't distinguish between owning slaves (and the responsibility of emancipating them) and buying dollar-store chocolate (and the "responsibility" of not buying it).
I have a very coherent political position, you're just treat-brained and I just got done arguing with someone equally treat-brained and I'm not interested in continuing. Like I'm said, I'm sure you can find someone else around here to explain how you're wrong.
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Private boycotts do not have material consequences. Big loud public ones sometimes do.
In other words private boycotts DO have material consequences, as long as they're mediated through collective action, I'd like to see how you organize these collective boycotts without the individual actions of private boycotters and the appropriate moral character that brings light to the suffering of child laborers. Is there a psychic beacon that magically convinces everyone big boycotts are worthwhile, or maybe it has to start somewhere?
This is why egoist arguments like yours are incoherent at scale, instead of merely viewing morality as a religious phenomenon, you should view it in part as a powerful signaling mechanism that can solidify an underlying collective energy, which serves as the catalyst for the material transformation you seemingly care about
In other words private boycotts DO have material consequences, as long as they're mediated through collective action
that's not a private boycott anymore. like the terms are useless if you want to use them that way.
It's a distinction without a difference in the first instance, whether solo or collectively; at the end of the day it's still your wallet that's the leverage point, unless you got a joint personal bank account with your local org?
nah it's the mass action that makes it do literally anything. otherwise i'm boycotting every company i happen to not buy anything from, which on most days is all of them.
I personally do view morality in that light. My assessment is that OP does not and instead believes that we have a moral responsibility to not eat chocolates if we think that child labor was found in the supply chain, which ignores pretty much everything about everything else, including the device used to post the content, host it, and share it. I know for a fact that the phone in my hand used exploitation, unequal exchange, and ecosystem destruction. I wouldn't be surprised if there was both child labor and slave labor in the supply chain to produce this phone.
The same is true for the public transportation I ride. The same is true for the jobs I work and the materials I have to used. The same is true for hospitals and medicine manufactories. We can't just decide that we're going to pick a single commodity and say that you have a moral responsibility to abstain from consumption and if you don't then you're an enemy of the struggle.
Some commodities are more vulnerable to collective pressure than others; recognizing the distinctions in production among commodities is not hypocrisy. For example, boycotting chocolate is simpler than boycotting oil, and moral responsibility varies based on the circumstances that gave rise to that commodity and whether or not those circumstances can be addressed socially
When we boycott one thing but not another, morality as a signaling mechanism takes on a tactical character; similarly, when you're laying siege, you aim for the paths of least resistance before storming the keep. Building upon one victory after another, gaining confidence and cohesion as you go
You can't climb every wall simultaneously, so it's pointless and counterproductive to use that impossibility as an excuse to not do something, even individually, which is just the component cell of collective action
100% until the conclusion of the last sentence. We have fundamentally and thoroughly demonstrated that individual consumer choice has almost no impact on the externalities. Recycling is probably the most egregious example of this. What fixed the CFC problem was cap and trade regulation, not consumer choice. These problem were never caused by individual consumer choice so making individual consumers choices will never be the solution. Not purchasing candy is not a component cell of collective action. A component cell of collective action would be showing up to the meetings every week and holding the discipline agreed to within the group based on material analysis of the system you are trying to change. If we don't have groups that have meetings, then choosing not to buy chocolate is going to be about as effective as praying for the child laborers. Because that's what these private individual consumer choices ultimately are - a way to self-soothe while standing on a pile of corpses. Are we going to sit here and argue that even though that group over there may be fascists organizating to maintain a white supremacist aociety, at least they're recycling?
Action must be grounded in theory, theory must be grounded in material analysis. Material analysis must be grounded in action. We have seen this loop for personal consumer boycotts in the Global North and the result has been no material change in the conditions of the workers. We have also seen how this form of moralizing works against organizing and recruitment because it actively destroys relationships. And of course it does, it's literally the same type of proselytizing that Abrahamic religions use to divide populations against each other. When we look towards other models of communicating morality, we see that it is entirely possible to integrate with people who are behaving immorally (up to a point) and that the outcomes in the short and long term are substantially better.
Don't let quixotic liberal marketing campaigns lead you into reactionary traps; of course what people decide (or are induced) to send their money on matters to any cohesive material analysis of the circuit of capital, disruptions of the realization phase of the circuit requires boycotts as an available tool, consumption is not merely personal, it's also structural and leveraging that structure requires convincing quite alot of people to INDIVIDUALLY withhold money from a firm
So again, unless you have a magic psychic beacon, the convincing part requires a moral narrative as a component of the necessary organizing. Because the logistics of boycott organizing still requires individual initiative, integrity, and discipline to work
Not purchasing candy is not a component cell of collective action. A component cell of collective action would be showing up to the meetings every week and holding the discipline agreed to within the group based on material analysis of the system you are trying to change
If the component cell of collective action requires showing up to meetings every week to convince people not to purchase candy, then I hate to break it to you, but yes not purchasing candy in that instance does become a component cell of collective action
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yea but you don't need to justify stealing it
child labor is used because it is cheap and raises profits not bc people buy the products produced with child labor, i don't understand why this is causing a struggle session
child labor is used because it is cheap and raises profits not bc people buy the products produced with child labor
Wtf does that even mean? Where do profits come from if you produce a product that isn't sold?
child labor, poor conditions, exploitation etc don't come from consumption they are a result of the logic of capitalism of profit maximization. the no ethical consumption phase is simply a tautology, you need to up end the mode of production not not consume, to consume is to live. logical conclusions need to be followed to their ends to figure out if you're in a death cult or not
To consume what you need is to live. To enjoy your food is to have a good life. To consume specific treats is to consume treats.
Great succinct insight. Thank you.
It's causing a struggle session because we're all still trying to shed our mental habits of idealistic morality. It's hard and results in these sorts of things.
another point i'll express here, bc i don't want to wade into the mire below, is that the solution to the problems caused by the logic of capitalism is class struggle. you mention that loud boycotts work but they don't, they don't change the logic,and they use up a lot of effort
Agreed, that's why I try to couple the statement that loud boycotts work with the caveat that it only works to achieve reforms. When one takes a global perspective in class struggle, that fits loud boycotts into a specific place in society and if one is inclined against reformism, it relegates boycotts to the realm of deck chairs on the titanic
what did all this get you, to be called a TreatHitler?
Nobody is calling anybody else names as far as I can tell.
https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works//download/pdf/condition-working-class-england.pdf
Hell yeah, inject it directly into my veins.
There's no struggle session here because oop is not really an anarchist and completely misread Kropotkin. They are just a radlib treatlerite and that whole thread is breaking my
Oop is indeed having a radlib treatlerite moment
This is just the meat thing again
It started being about the meat thing, but I guess I just expected people to have a shred of decency about it when it was actual human beings.
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I don't see anything significantly wrong with that comment in the screenshot.
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The idea that "the chocolate has already been made" has any bearing on anything. Buying chocolate sends a price signal to produce more chocolate.
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The idea that the "lost" chocolate is "written off through taxes and insurance." They seem to be operating under this idea that companies are incapable of losing money because they just have a magic button they can press to make up any difference.
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In general, the idea that "no ethical consumption under capitalism" gives a blank check to consume any unethical product, no matter how easily avoidable, putting treats before everything else.
Basically the whole thing is nonsense, the only air of legitimacy comes from them strawmanning and arguing against "ethical consumption solves everything" as opposed to my actual position of, "The fact that ethical consumption isn't sufficient doesn't mean you should just do whatever."
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Kropotikin was famously anti child labor
