this post was submitted on 02 May 2026
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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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