No.1836761
reformists are brainwashed to believe that only the most spineless action imaginable is all that we're capable of as a political movement. never nationalizing a company and having to off treasonous CEOs or scaring politicians into passing more meaningful reforms via rioting. this is because they believe in "respectability politics" and also because they identify first and foremost as an american, much like identifying as a rhodesian or israeli, which are all fascist synthetic national identities worthy of being forgotten
No.1836762
>>1836757Wow does she look racially ambiguous
No.1836763
>>1836761>>1836757What's wrong with doing both?
No.1836765
>>1836757> this idea that any revolutionary change will be achieved through just one more boycott bro, just one more election, one more piece of activism, is so delusional to mei doubt anyone thinks these actions will bring out revolutionary change. they just hurt the profits of targeted organizations. It's like sanctions for leftists.
>all capitalist organizations are equally exploitativeequally exploitative of the proletariat but not equally exploitative in other regards. If someone is making bombs that gets dropped on Palestinians that's not the same as a petit bourgeois restaurant chain. Both a petit bourgeois restaurant chain and a munitions manufacturer exploit the labor power of the proletariat, but only one is dropping bombs on people. And so I can see why some orgs would want to boycott. The same goes for companies with close ties to Israel. It is what it is. People are going to try these strategies when it comes to issues close to their heart even if they aren't the most effective strategies for combating the mode of production itself. Not all praxis is directly contributing to bringing about a revolution. Some praxis, like mutual aid, is meant to reduce suffering under the existing conditions.
>>1836761sort of true but overstated
>>1836762race is fake anyway.
t. "quadroon"
>>1836763this
No.1836766
Many of these types are middle-class and their work is unsuited to effective labor action. Naturally their point of attack on "the system" is consumption rather than production.
>>1836763>>1836765>what's wrong with liberal activism?You're on a socialist imageboard.
No.1836770
>>1836763>>1836765if you have the time and money to waste on meaningless actions then do so, but dont pretend the proletariat can afford, in many senses, to do the same bullshit you do. 'you should boycott X because theyre doing Y thing' is retarded and doesnt change anything. if you think boycotting mcdonalds will stop the israeli state from doing what it does, your views are that of a child
No.1836771
>>1836770boycotting doesn't waste time or money. In fact it does the opposite because it's a negative action. If I decide I'm not going to by Sabra Hummus anymore because it's Israeli that's one less thing I have to buy, and more money in my pocket. It also removes the few seconds I lost putting their overpriced shit in my cart at the store. I save money and time by boycotting partners in genocide. You're just a mossad wrecker. Kill yourself. NOW.
No.1836773
>>1836769<OMG YOU LE GLOW>just memes, zero substancesays the piece of shit liberal pushing garbage 'praxis' like voting with your wallet as remotely relevant to a communist movement. fucking embarrassing posts all around
>>1836771>stop buying thing, find other thing that might be more expensiveyup totally not a waste of time nor money for people who live from paycheck to paycheck. support the nicer bourgeoisie because capital totally works like that and isnt global or anything like that
No.1836776
if we were to boycott every product that was produced through exploitation, we would starve to death. if only libshits and pbs placed their efforts on actually useful shit
No.1836778
>>1836769>>if you [place consumption over production] you're a liberalLol yes.
Immediately responding with "at least I'm doing something!".
>>1836765>they just hurt the profits of targeted organizations. It's like sanctions for leftists.That's a very apt analogy because sanctions don't even do the things the American government pretends they do!
No.1836783
>>1836776the point of boycotting isn't to boycott everything produced through exploitation. Boycotting is meant to target particularly egregious producers. Like people collaborating in a genocide. It's not meant to target literally every single capitalist organization. That's obviously a non viable strategy. Why are you playing dumb?
>>1836778it's not placing consumption over production because it's not mutually exclusive with revolution. you're just playing dumb and pretending it's mutually exclusive because you're an obstinate little shit who wants to defend his genocide treats with "actually I'm placing production over consumption"
No.1836785
>>1836783Remember all those silly burgers getting mad at "woke corporations"? How did those boycotts go? Is Neftlix gone? Amazon? Bank of America? Campbell's soup? Carhartt? Coca-cola? Disney? Are they all gone? Starbucks, Wrangler jeans? All destroyed by a flimsy reactionary "boycott"? No? But this one is going to work? Alright.
>it's not placing consumption over production because it's not mutually exclusive with revolutionYou literally have no idea what you're even talking about and, as expected, can only resort to being an epic memelord and posting pictures that have no relevance to any of the posts at all (what the fuck is
>>1836779 trying to say?!), because I bet memes are the only way you've even "learned" about socialism.
No.1836787
>>1836784>I care so little I get mad when someone points out the obvious fact it's not doing anything and it's liberal activism at bestOkay then.
No.1836789
>>1836765I'm quadroonpilled now. I like her bitchy attitude strangely enough.
>>1836766>>1836770I live in a third world shithole and I don't pay taxes to shitsrhell. Instead of buying zionist slop I buy local knockoff. What's the problem? This is not me enacting communism and solving world hunger, it's just who the fuck cares I ain't giving you an extra dollar.
No.1836790
>>1836789for every dollar you didnt give to israel the us government is giving them 100000000000 lol. at least you can feel good with your consumption habits
No.1836793
>>1836790boycotting isn't effective but neither is bitching about it
No.1836794
>>1836790Nice projection.
No.1836795
>>1836791>it's not mutually exclusive with revolutionBut it is. Efforts direct at liberal activism can be directed at something that works instead.
No.1836796
>>1836794>projectionwords mean things you know
No.1836798
>>1836793yup i should stop whining that liberals are whining whenever someone buys the wrong product. both sides le bad!!!
No.1836800
>>1836795>you didn't buy the genocide hummus, now you can't do real praxisboycotting is literally not mutually exclusive with revolutionary praxis because it's a negative action. It takes zero time or energy to boycott something, therefore it doesn't stop you from doing anything else. It's just the act of
not buying something. why are you playing dumb?
No.1836804
>>1836800look at all the effort youre placing into defending the indefensible and then you have the balls to tell me they arent mutually exclusive with actual proletarian action lmao
>It takes zero time or energy to boycottdemonstrably false
>It's just the act of not buying somethinglol its the act of buying
something else, not "nothing"
No.1836805
>>1836795why aren't you storming the
winter palace white house with your revolutionary cadre right now? you're wasting time on an image board. this is so liberal of you.
No.1836806
political actions either are communist or not. if they arent, theyre obviously exclusive from the movement
No.1836807
>>1836804>lol its the act of buying something else, not "nothing"no, boycotting is simply the act of not buying something. It doesn't require you to buy something else instead. For example, if I boycott a soda company I don't have to buy a different soda, I could just stop drinking soda since it's shit for my health anyways. You're magnificent at playing dumb.
No.1836811
>>1836807>just stop drinking soda altogether!!!!i love how your examples just keep implying more and more efforts, which clearly goes against your initial stupid argument
No.1836812
>>1836790K, still gonna do as the other anon and buy cheap knockoffs
No.1836813
>>1836809>boycotting is liberalit isnt?
No.1836814
>>1836811>it takes effort to not drink diabetes slopskill issue
No.1836815
>>1836796You like your coke and can't part with it. You don't want to feel guilty when eating your daily six bags of Doritos because there is nothing to do. We get it faggot. You shouldn't feel guilt without making a song and dance about if you truly believed in what you preach.
I do. That's why I don't care if people boycott shit or not.
No.1836816
>>1836815your arguments are so fucking dumb holy shit
>uh boycotting is just doing nothing bro>yeah just stop eating, drinking, buying anythingsuper logical and convincing
No.1836817
>>1836814so not even gonna bother with your bullshit that it takes "no effort to boycott" anymore?
No.1836819
@1836816
<look i used the strawman meme arrows!!1
rope
No.1836823
>>1836816different anon
>>1836817it certainly is less work than engaging with your posts
No.1836835
>>1836832Voting with your wallet is still better than nothing.
No.1836837
>>1836832"voting with your wallet" is dumb liberal idiocy that doesn't achieve anything
Still paying dat knockoff lays doe
No.1836841
>>1836832Engels in an 1895 letter to Schutler implies that boycotting can be praxis. In the letter, he complains that the London trade unions are too disorganized to be capable of organizing boycotts like the beer boycott that happened in Berlin.
https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1895/letters/95_01_01.htmIn an 1886 letter to Sorge, Engels says that actions like strikes and boycotts are much more effective than "theoretical enlightenment."
https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1886/letters/86_04_29.htmIn the introduction to
The Class Struggles in France, Engels says that "all serious opposition parties" in Spain boycotted bourgeois elections.
https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/subject/hist-mat/class-sf/intro.htmIn 1906 Lenin said that boycotts are sometimes a correct strategy, and sometimes not. He gives the example of boycotting the Bulygin Duma as an example of a correct boycott.
https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1906/aug/21b.htmIn 1907 Lenin said that the boycott "is one of the finest revolutionary traditions of the most eventful and heroic period of the (early) Russian revolution"
https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1907/boycott/v.htm No.1836844
>>1836835boycotting isn't even "voting with your wallet" The phrase "voting with your wallet" is usually used to imply that purchasing superior products drives inferior products from the market. Boycotting is a negative strategy. It can mean refusing to participate in an election, refusing to buy from a certain company, refusing to attend a certain institution, etc. It's a multifaceted but ultimately negative strategy. Voting with your wallet is a positive strategy of rewarding the "lesser evil" with money.
No.1836859
I'm just wondering if it's impossible to teach politics to some people
No.1837046
>>1836809>>1836809Lol the rap one was my favorite
I also like how much the punk one was clearly influenced by the offspring
No.1837174
>>1836757what are you doing that's so much more effective than boycotting and voting?
No.1837183
>>1836806inane. everything should be understood as having three sides: friend, enemy, and irrelevant.
most non-communist tactics fall under irrelevant, not enemy.
and most "communist" tactics would fairly be considered the enemy of communists, since they are self-destructive.>>1836841not OP, but what would you say to my case:
a) that just because important historical figures endorsed a tactic does not, in itself, mean that it's actually effective especially as
b) the ability to order products online means that there's no longer much serious social risk to violating a boycott (except on clothes and cars, i guess) unless you're incompetent - if the boys in Berlin see you going for a beer then you're not going to be very popular, but nowadays you can go out to march for palestine and then when at home sit buying בירה נשר from amazon with nobody any the wiser.
c) capitalist firms have merged, agglomorated, and cross-shareholded like motherfuckers since the 1970s, making it much more logistically difficult. swapping your coke for a sprite just means the numbers are in different tabs on coke's balance sheets. this gets even worse when you go one level higher, to the shareholders: what do you do if your workplace pension fund is the one invested in coke in the first place? if, by virtue of "investing" in the pension fund and by capitalist magic,
you are the one who owns the coca cola company you're trying to boycott? (well, you can try to get the pension fund to divest, but…)
which leaves two real advantages to boycotting:
1. the PR of boycotting, to damage the reputation of the firm in question. (i.e. outward facing, contra-b but still often has issues with c)
2. something to organise around and something people can do to demonstrate their loyalty to a cause - regardless of the impact on sales numbers. (i.e. inward facing)
also, incidentally, Lenin appears to be referring to boycotting parliament rather than boycotting goods?
No.1837194
>>1837183>and most "communist" tactics would fairly be considered the enemy of communists, since they are self-destructive.I'm getting armchair vibes. But at least you can look at politics and not see religion.
Good job
No.1837295
I love the double standard at work in this eternal internet argument
Because most of the time not only is it literally beneficial for you to boycott [product] egoistically, but you also never hear the "No Ethical Consumption Under Capitalism" phrase come up in any of the myriad other places daily where we all just default consume A > B or X > Y according to our conception of the world and our judgements of it, but the moment it comes up within the context of an organized, highly analytically engaged and specific example of specifically egregious corporations or companies especially vulnerable or under elevated scrutiny in a specific period of time, all of a sudden demand doesn't effect firms and you are a supernatural ghost floating outside of material reality.
Yes, I can will and do easily simply not consume McDonald's, since it is boilerplate 'Standard American Diet' ultra-processed junk food (poison, not in my self-interest). No, I don't mind knowing Starbucks connection to the Zionist entity whenever some black bloccers are having a moment deliberating which establishment to torch with only one bottle of petrol left.
No.1837318
>>1837309>wut r anti-colonialism relationship to anti-imperialism Lenin fucked your mom, learn to accept it, grow from it
No.1837327
>>1837183>t just because important historical figures endorsed a tactic does not, in itself, mean that it's actually effectiveyes, but I was not making the case that it is always effective. I was making the case that it is not inherently a thing only libs do. Also it is sometimes effective, sometimes ineffective, like most things. Context matters much more.
No.1837339
i'm still not buying your products moshe, tough luck
No.1838187
>>1836765>to hurt a company's profitsWell it's not working. Coke is growing just fine. The only entities helping Palestine right now are the Houthis, Iran and a little bit of China. Kind of funny to use sanctions as the analogy since sanctions don't work either.
>>1836769You can have your little freakout but your "protest by consumption" has objectively done nothing and this is exactly why succ-dems get ridiculed. It's the same little monkey dance they do every time, like how they shilled the skwaaaad and now the skwaaad all voted for war.
No.1838190
>>1837329So it's just a mindless act of self-indulgence, like we were saying. Very liberal coded language too.
No.1838193
Can't wait for most of leftypol to say "duuuuude you can do direct action AND waste your time voting for your favorite child rapist too stop your ideological purity!!!!!" in a few months.
No.1838325
I think it's reasonable to do it, but if you think it will change the world you're a retard. So basically do it and shut the fuck about it. Maybe tell a few others you're doing it so they join in, but don't make it out like you're gonna bankrupt the company. That rarely happens.
No.1840254
>>1837329Who is the hero pissing on the grave?
No.1840256
>>1838325>So basically do it and shut the fuck about it.The funny thing is OP was saying exactly this but with more words and all the moralist libtards got triggered anyway.
No.1840274
>>1838190>So it's just a mindless act of self-indulgence, like we were sayingI was responding to someone saying it's like self flagellation during a plague, which spread the disease, i.e. is actively harmful. I was not responding to someone saying it's an act of mindless self indulgence. Keep the particular chain of replies in mind and try not to get me confused with other anons, if you can help it.
And if you read my post more carefully, I said…
>boycotting, is, at its very worst, like pissing on the grave of someone you hate. Ineffective, but satisfying.The context in which a boycott is done, and the level of organization surrounding the boycott, determine the level of effectiveness of a boycott. But that's not a fun answer when you're looking for a simple "boycott cringe versus boycott based" narrative.
You want to say boycott always = cringe, always = mindless self indulugence. I want to say boycotting is a tool in a toolbox, and whether it is effective or not depends on the usual contextual elements of who/what/when/where/why/how.
This is pretty in line with the Engels dropped here.
>>1836841>Playing with the boycott and with little strikes is, of course, much more important than theoretical enlightenment.You can sit there denouncing mass action as "liberal" and "ineffective" all you like. But how else is a given generation of workers supposed to gain experience except through by doing things and making mistakes and living in their given historical context?
>Theoretical ignorance is a characteristic of all young peoples, but so is practical rapidity of development, too. If you really think boycotts never work, you should go among people actually boycotting and tell them to their face it is ineffective, and why. You should reorganize them instead of complaining about their tactics from the sidelines.
No.1840297
>>1836757>this idea that any revolutionary change will be achieved through just one more boycott bro, just one more election, one more piece of activism, is so delusional to me.It's all a constant process, retard.
No.1840489
>>1840274>boycotting is a tool in a toolboxok
but not buying x product is the most innocuous form of boycott
<the apostles said boycott good so all boycott good and effective<lets just stop buying this its such a blow to the bourgeois guys<…but dont talk about unionizing, organizing, seizing the means of production, THAT SCARES PEOPLE!i know im strawmanning but boycotts are so retarded they deserve no serious engagement in debate
>you should go among people actually boycotting and tell them to their face it is ineffective, and why. You should reorganize them instead of complaining about their tactics from the sidelinesnow were talking
No.1840504
>>1840489>i know im strawmanning but boycotts are so retarded they deserve no serious engagement in debateExcept it seen success against SA. Except its starting to see success against Israel.
Fuck off you disingenuous wrecker cunts.
No.1840519
>>1837183>>1836841I agree with these two Anons, there are serious benefits relative to boycotting, and serious obstacles for that boycotting to be effective.
For an example of sucessful boycotting, take a look at the Swadeshi Movement in Colonial India, Gandhi supported it from afar in South Africa, I believe there was some relation to Lenin here possibly either as reader or listener of these events.
However with no tight knit communities, and many living in cities of strangers, it is hard to force that social stigma relating to boycott, however with social media we can see that social stigma, and even in the video that OP posted.
And what I was taught about apartheid, was boycotting massively shutdown the regimes economy, this must have helped the anti-apartheid movement, I see why not the same relative to palestine.
No.1840521
>>1840489>i know im strawmanningwhy even post then, fuck off
No.1840522
>>1840519To add on, look at protests, how people have forced people out of fast food places, like McDonalds, this has been seen both in the west and the east, with many shop fronts being empty.
No.1840525
Boycotts as a concept assume consuming the product to be a norm to be returned to. Like I'm for some reason supposed to return to buying HP computers if they denounce israel, rather than simply use the fact that they stood with israel as an excuse to find easier to repair PCs with non-shit drivers and never look back.
>the left (mostly liberals)
libs are centrist. I don't think anyone other than rightoids have humored the idea of liberals being left of center in the past decade. Some leftists have internalized liberalism, but that's it's own thing.
No.1840526
>>1836757Maybe reformism is better than waiting 200 years for a revolution to happen and fix all your problems.
No.1840531
>>1840504yeah yeah and profit comes from consumption
stupid menshevik
No.1840535
>>1837339update: i'm still not buying any zio infected products
No.1840536
>>1840526Rather reform then revolution, as Lenin so intelligent said
No.1840539
>>1840536Maybe reform vs revolution is a false dichotomy cause reform is impossible and leads to radicalization.
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