>Yoshie wrote,
>
>>Moderating one's own consumption would improve one's health, for
>>sure. However, boycotting products when workers or peasants are not
>>calling for the boycott of the said products would not improve their
>>lives at all. Don't be selfish.
>
>Don't be selfish?
>Tom Walker
Moralism = Individualism.
I think of Green consumerism as an expression of self-satisfaction of
middle-strata folks in rich nations (those whom Michael Hoover would
call "granola lunch bunch"). Most of the Green consumerists don't
want to abolish capitalism at all, but their consumption of organic
produce & "cruelty-free" products; eschewal of "bad" products (e.g.,
fur, meat, tobacco, recreational drugs, etc.); exercise & meditation;
etc. make them feel that they are morally superior to poor sods who
"don't know any better" (e.g., factory workers who smoke in front of
their children). This despite the fact that the higher your income
is, the more natural resource you use, so, in all likelihood,
middle-strata Green consumerists are living much more ecologically
harmful lives than the poor smokers whom they look down upon.
Green consumerism also is a dialectical twin of corporate
Greenwashing as well, in that both want to make capitalism
"ecologically sustainable": we buy/sell Green, we are good
citizens/corporate citizens; capitalism in itself is not a problem --
ecologically harmful practices are.
Marxists should challenge this sort of moralism & individualism that
make folks unable to see capitalism itself as the problem. One can't
buy one's merry way into a Green utopia. To think that one can is to
buy snake oil of modern advertising wholesale.
Yoshie
