Reply #12: I don't think we're actually disagreeing except on the fine points [View All]

1) By common identity, I don't mean something that includes every living human being. I mean something more on the tribal level -- us steelworkers, us autoworkers, us Pullman car conductors, us workers of the world. Something that gives people the sense of being a well-defined group with shared goals and a possibility of mutual solidarity.

It's been groups like that and the movements based on them -- the labor movement, the civil rights movement -- that carried progressive initiatives along in the 20th century, and I don't see things being any different now. By that standard, "consumers" is not a viable basis for a progressive movement.

2) If the goal is to curb the power of the corporations, and the method is voting, where do consumers come into the equation? If a corporation wants to move into my neighborhood and build a meat irradiation facility, I'm not opposing them as a consumer. If WalMart is underpaying its employees so blatantly that my tax dollars have to go to subsidizing them, I'm not outraged as a consumer. So why call it a Consumer Party at all?

3) After the last couple of elections, I have no faith at all in voting. Do you really believe that voters count for much of anything with politicans compared to corporate money? I believe that some form of direct action, akin to the labor movement, is going to be necessary to get anywhere. The only question is where the point of leverage will be.

4) By working outside the system I don't mean outside the entire political complex of the nation. I mean outside the corporate/consumer relationship. As consumers, we are weak and dependent. Even as voters, we discovering that we are ignorable. There has to be some alternative that transcends ordinary calculations of economic and political advantage.

I can think of a few issues that potentially might transcend politics-as-usual and turn people against corporate hegemony in a big way. One is the environment, particularly if things go to hell in a handbasket as fast as it looks like they may. Another is the outsourcing/job loss issue. A third is the homeland security issue, if it becomes obvious that the corporations care more about profits than about security. A fourth might arise if the Bushies do manage to dismantle consumer and worker protection laws to the point where the average person starts to feel the pinch.

But ultimately, I think the issue has to be a moral one: The "profit motive" is a narrow appeal to greed, and greed is no basis on which to run a society. The laws which force corporations to act on the basis of greed are a license for immorality in those who have no shame and a barrier against moral behavior on the part of those who do have some sense of higher responsibility. As moral beings, we cannot continue to allow our culture to be dominated by soulless entities with no moral compass.

Hey, how about the "Social Responsibility Party"? It's got a kind of a 19th century ring to it, but ultimately it could take us a lot further than any attempt to play along with the flawed assumptions of the prevailing system.