From: Platt Holden (pholden@sc.rr.com)
Date: Tue Nov 08 2005 - 14:43:23 GMT
Hi All,
I have one answer to Ant's long anti-capitalist, Marxist-inspired screed
portraying all except malevolent corporations as victims of an evil
system:
"The Metaphysics of Quality provides the vocabulary. A free market is a
Dynamic institution. What people buy and what people sell, in other words
what people valve, can never be contained by any intellectual formula.
What makes the marketplace work is Dynamic Quality. The market is always
changing and the direction of that change can never be predetermined.
The Metaphysics of Quality says the free market makes everybody richer-by
preventing static economic patterns from setting in and stagnating
economic growth. That is the reason the major capitalist economies of the
world have done so much better since World War II than the major socialist
economies. (Lila, 17)
Note especially Pirsig's statement " . . . what people value can never
by contained by any intellectual formula," blowing right out of the water
Ant's assertion that profit is a social value "immorally taking precedent
over intellectual values."
Platt
> At the end of his November 6th post, Matt Poot asked our opinion about the
> high percentage of mass produced consumer goods available in the West made
> in China and other countries with (relatively) low quality working
> conditions:
>
> >What do you think guys (gals)?
> >
>
> Matt,
>
> I think what you observed in your tour of Toronto shoe shops was quite
> disturbing. And I’m afraid to say that if you made a similar excursion in
> any typical UK town, I highly doubt it would be too different.
>
> This is why I think developing a critical attitude towards advertising and
> the mass media in general is so important whether it’s in the form of a
> (non-relativist?) social sciences degree, visiting exhibitions such as Ed
> Burtynsky’s “Manufactured Landscapes” or reading books such as Naomi’s
> Klein’s “No Logo”. In fact, the latter has now spawned a dedicated website
> at: http://www.nologo.org which addresses a number of the central issues
> (summarised below):
>
> 1. Why do people work in sweatshops if the conditions are so bad? Aren’t
> jobs in sweatshops better than traditional farming jobs?
>
> People take jobs in sweatshops because working in a sweatshop is better
> than watching your family starve. But what sort of a choice is that? What
> sort of standard of human dignity does it represent?
>
> People who work in sweatshops… frequently come from communities that used
> to subsist by means of communal and traditional farming methods. Free trade
> agreements have displaced them, or their land has been expropriated as
> governments have altered communal land ownership laws to make their
> countries more appealing to foreign investors. Without land, and without
> communal infrastructure to support them through difficult farming cycles,
> it ceases to be possible for families to sustain themselves by farming. The
> social fabric of the community is also torn and damaged.
>
> Many workers would much rather farm long and physically gruelling hours
> because that would preserve their community’s capacity for economic and
> political self-determination, their access to their land. However, when
> that ceases to be an option, they can only survive if family members, often
> young women, take jobs in sweatshops….
>
> 2. Is there a website that has a complete list of bad corporations, and
> that documents labour and environmental abuses perpetrated by each one?
>
> There are a number of very informative sites (but none that are entirely
> comprehensive).
>
> www.transnationale.org is a “citizens” portal on brands and corporations”.
> You can search for the profile of one of over 9,500 companies in the
> transnationale data-base. Profiles list the subsidiaries or parent
> companies of the brand, their social and environmental records, the numbers
> of jobs they have cut and their human rights abuses…
>
> www.corpwatch.org features news, analysis and exposes about various
> corporations with records of environmental, labour, or social injustices.
> It also highlights specific campaigns. It does not have a vast data-base of
> information about corporations, but the reports and exposés it does publish
> can be very useful. The site also has a guide to doing on-line research on
> corporations.
>
> corporatewatch.org.uk should not be confused with the US-based Corp Watch
> cited above; the two are independent of each other. The Corp Watch UK site
> does have a database of profiles of some well-known environmental and
> labour offenders. Corp Watch UK is a research and publishing group that
> focuses on corporations. In addition to the website, it puts out a
> bi-monthly newsletter. It is also a workers’ co-op.
>
> 3. How can I consume ethically, since it is almost impossible to buy
> anything that hasn’t been produced under poor labour conditions, for
> slave-wages or by companies with poor environmental records? Is it best to
> boycott the biggest or most famous labour and environmental offenders like
> Nike, Gap, Shell or McDonald’s?
>
> Big question. It highlights the deep limitations of consumer activism.
>
> Our economic system makes it almost impossible to consume ‘ethically’,
> since everything that is produced within it is produced through the
> exploitation of human labour and of the environment.
>
> Free-market capitalism is founded on one value: the maximization of profit.
> Other values, like human dignity and solidarity, or environmental
> sustainability, are disregarded as soon as they limit potential profit
> [i.e. social values immorally taking precedent over intellectual values].
>
> For example, if you own a manufacturing company in a market system that
> puts you in competition with other manufacturers, one way you maximize
> profit is by trying to produce things at lower cost than other companies.
> If that means reducing the wages of your employees - so be it. And if
> people in one country won’t work for less than you’re paying them, you can
> move the factory to a locale where farmers displaced from their land by the
> construction of trade corridors or other industrial investment plans will
> work for slave-wages….
>
> Advocates of ‘ethical consumption’ and consumer activism believe the
> capitalist myth that free-markets ensure that production conforms to
> freely-made consumer choices. In fact, our choices are frequently
> manipulated by companies with multi-million dollar marketing budgets that
> they spend to increase demand and justify surplus production….
>
> That said, to critique consumer activism isn’t to say that consumer
> boycotts are always a bad tactic. In fact, consumer boycotts that target
> particular corporate offenders give activists a chance to really illuminate
> the oppressions that capitalism allows and encourages.
>
> But capitalism, and the colonialism and imperialism that found it, can only
> be challenged if we understand ourselves as people and as political agents
> struggling against a web of interconnected systems of domination - not
> merely as consumers trying to make the least evil choice. Real political
> change can’t be bought by the dollars wealthy people can spend on niche
> markets. Our political power does not reside in our capacity as consumers,
> but in our capacity as human agents fighting on many fronts for the justice
> and dignity of all people. [And being a pragmatist, I think that also
> includes philosophy and, in particular, the analysis of values].
>
> 4. How can I get involved in the movement for global justice?
>
> Look around you and think about the causes of the injustices staring you
> back. Look at your food and recognize the exploitation of migrant workers
> who grow your food, or at your clothes and see the enslavement of the
> sweatshop workers who sew them. Look at the homeless person down the street
> and figure out how many people have been the evicted in your town because
> of rising rents and cuts to welfare…
>
> Build solidarity between local movements by drawing connections between
> issues that are perceived to be discrete. Draw parallels and make links
> between the struggles you’re involved in locally and similar struggles
> taking place internationally.
>
> -----------------------------
>
> In other words, dare I say it, take a more enlightened broader view of
> things (as summarised nicely by Marsha’s Wombat found at:
> www.globalcommunity.org/flash/wombat.shtml).
>
> Best wishes,
>
> Anthony.
>
>
> P.S. Here’s a more complete version of the light hearted description of
> advertisers by Bill Hicks mentioned in DMB’s excellent introduction to this
> subject on November 4th:
>
> “By the way, if anyone here is in advertising or marketing, kill yourself.
> Thank you, thank you. Just a little thought. I’m just trying to plant
> seeds. Maybe one day they’ll take root. I don’t know. You try. You do what
> you can… Kill yourselves. Seriously though, if you are, do. No really,
> there’s no rationalisation for what you do, and you are Satan’s little
> helpers filling the planet with filth and bile, kill yourself. I don’t care
> how you do it. Suck on a tailpipe, swallow some pills, borrow a pistol from
> an NRA buddy, but kill yourself... OK? Kill yourselves, seriously. You’re
> the ruiner of all things good. Seriously, no, this is not a joke. ‘There’s
> gonna be a joke coming...’ There’s no fucking joke coming, you are Satan’s
> spawn, filling the world with bile and garbage, you are fucked and you are
> fucking us, kill yourselves, it’s the only way to save your fucking soul.
> Kill yourself, kill yourself now. Now, back to the show.”
>
> (http://www.stcynic.com/blog/archives/2004/05/who_was_bill_hi.php)
>
>
>
> .
>
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