There is, we are told, no ethical consumption under capitalism, and so it is. Any participation in a system of exploitation is exploitative, and one cannot engage in even the simplest acts of daily survival without being, in some way, complicit with the cruelty and destruction that the system is built on. It is also true that there is no such thing as meaningful non-participation in capitalism, at least from where we sit; most of those who are able to live even at a slight remove from the brutal cycle of extraction, exploitation, and waste do so only because they have accumulated enough wealth — that is, because they are participants in capitalism — to make the ‘choice’ to opt out of it.
Among those who are aware enough to articulate this idea, however, there are people who insist that the truism that there is no ethical consumption under capitalism is a bit of a dodge. It is an excuse, they say, to simply ignore one’s obligation to source, consume, and dispose in as ethical a way as possible. This may be true, as far as it goes, and certainly we have at least some responsibility to withhold economic support from some of the worst actors in the so-called free market — at least, as much as is possible given the restrictive circumstances under which so many of us, victims of that same exploitation and cruelty, are able to do and still keep house and home together.
The problem with this is that it’s true without being particularly useful. One might as well say that there are too many racists and misogynists in the trade unions, or that homophobia and transmisogyny are too widespread among the working class, or that leftist movements are insufficiently adapted to the needs of the disabled — and, indeed, many of the same people do say this, all the time. These things are all true, and they are all bad, and there should be (and are) dedicated people who have made it their business, as they ought to, to ensure that we are educated into an orientation that we at minimum acknowledge these truths, and at maximum work to correct them.
But they are home truths. They are calling out one’s comrades, something that absolutely should be done, but as in the matter of family transgressions, should not be done in full view of everyone. They are not for public consumption. They are internal affairs, and broadcasting them to our enemies — and let us remember that, that we have enemies and we know who they are — does not so much promote transparency as it does display weakness and division. This is one of the great lessons that the right has given to the left, if we were wise enough to see it. And the reason that they are not for public consumption is because they place the blame — even when blame needs to be placed — on the wrong people.
Publicly attacking people for making the ‘wrong’ consumer decisions places the blame in the one place where it does not belong: at the bottom of the pyramid, among the victims of the enemy, in the gutters where the shit squeezed out by the bosses flows downward. Is it true that working people are contributing to a wide range of problems by doing their shopping at Walmart? Certainly. But it is those same working people who are steps away from penury by the people who own Walmart: They are punished unto death by low wages, high costs, vanishing options, poor education, and a near total lack of economic mobility. The less they have, the less they can afford, and they must often make choices between feeding their families and paying their bills. If they ‘choose’ to buy the cheapest goods available, it is not a choice they have made; it is a choice that has bee forced upon them.
The racism drilled into their heads by similarly deprived parents and exacerbated by bad-faith actors in media and government; the lack of experience with people different from themselves that comes from intentional ghettoization of both parties; the inability of already-weakened leftist groups to organize under the most antagonistic and difficult conditions; the way disparate groups of workers are deliberately kept apart by the bosses, who intentional sow division among them to prevent any kind of solidaristic action: these are all problems to be solved, to be sure, but they are also problems created, deepened, and maintained by the ruling class, and the primary reason to solve them quietly and ruthlessly behind the curtain is because otherwise, we are losing sight of the real enemy.
In a world where people have been sickened and weakened by environmental conditions and a near-complete lack of access to health care, we hear scolding that auto-injectors and SSRI medications are crutches and ecological disasters. In a world where working people are forced to drive by vagaries of employment and a lack of public transit, and the elderly and disabled people are cut off from access to needed services by a lack of walkable neighborhoods, we hear blame that they’re part of the problem created by cars. In a world where our educational system is falling apart, our communities are scattered and isolated, and our news media is nonstop reactionary fear-mongering and propaganda, we hear scorn for those who can’t keep up with the proper language or attitudes. In a world where some people, miraculously, have the bravery and moral courage to make real sacrifices and others, tragically, become victims of fascist bullying, we are, depressingly, faced with claims that they deserve no commemoration because they have the wrong credentials to be ennobled with bravery or tragedy.
This is, frankly, disgraceful. It is blaming the victims. It kills solidarity, removes commonality, banishes universality, and elevates fragmented identity and individualism to the point of a paralytic narcissism. We must obviously work to eradicate all forms of bigotry, prejudice, and false consciousness among our comrades (and I emphasize here all forms), but it is the work of a unified working class, with an eye towards eliminating internal contradictions — not an unconnected project of creating further division and isolation for the sake of self-promotion and moral sanctimony.
We know who the real enemy is. We know what they do and how they do it. We know where they live and what their names are. And most importantly, we know the problems they create, and the reasons they create them. Every single moment of every single day, they are throwing everything they can at us to make us take our eyes off the prize, and that prize is overthrowing their stranglehold on every aspect of our lives. We must be laser-focused on opening the door to a newer, better, freer world, in which people can truly unlearn the toxic lessons the bosses have beaten into them, and where they can make real choices, borne not of desperation and inertia and fear, but liberation and possibility.