Just spend your money wisely?

[Comrade #138672]

I just watched the documentary Ethos (2011). For the most part it's pretty good, but the conclusion is awful.

Paraphrase: "When we see all these problems with corporations dictating our politics and exploiting workers in all countries, we must wake up and just spend our money wisely! We can decide what will happen with our money and that's how we can beat those big corporations."

I know this to be false, but when I'm trying to explain (to myself) why this is false, I'm not sure where to begin. It would be very useful to be able to explain, because many people will probably agree that corporations have too much power and that we need to spend our money wisely. However, they do not think that money is itself a problem or the means of production in the hands of the Bourgeoisie.

Is it enough to say that the Bourgeoisie has more money than the Proletariat and that "spending money wisely" will only slightly slow down wealth concentration at best?

[Philosophos]

Well as you said we have less money than they do and it will affect them just a little bit. What people must understand is that their power is not in spenting money but themselves. How is a revolution going to be more effective by spenting money only for the necessary or by taking over the means of production and kicking all these capitalists out of their posts?

It's not going to have any result this "just spend your money wisely" unless I'm missing something...

[x-punk]

I have never seen the documentary but the point is about spending money wisely does have a certain element of truth to it. It would have some influence over the corporations and the products they provide but I doubt if the effect would be that great.

Many of these products are essential to our quality of life eg medical supplies, food etc so unless we want to go primitivist en masse these corporations are going to get vast amounts of their products sold. And lets be honest that isnt going to happen and really why should it. If there was enough support from people to go to these lengths and sacrifice their quality of life in this way to bring down corporations, I think support could be mustered to bring these corporations down in a better way such as a socialist revolution.

In addition, the scale of these corporations means that they have huge influence over govt meaning that if there were problems with people not buying their products they could just get govt to intervene to prop them up ala Banks, General Motors etc.

But really, as you have mention the problem is really of capitalism and this action would not solve it. The large corporations own the means of production - vast swathes of land, production facilities, natural resources. So even if nobody bought their products they would still own these means of production meaning they would still have huge amounts of power and control over those who dont.

[Jimmie Higgins]

Well a quick way to expose the shallowness of this common argument even within it's own consumerist logic:

40% of people in the US have .2% while the top 20% hold 85% of all wealth in the US (half of which is just the 1% alone). So "voting with your dollar" is inherently a disenfranchising concept for the vast majority.

In another general sense this is flawed because the problem isn't that companies make products to fuck us over, there has to be at least some need or demand for them, so what are you supposed to do about, say, oil? We can't buy ourselves solar public transportation, solar municipal power sources, solar production plants for the "good products" we buy. We can't personally buy a new transportation system designed for cheap oil and cars and so on.

The consumer is literally the LEAST important factor in production, sure they need to be there on some level, but the companies are just responding to a general demand that fits into a range of possible profitability. There's a "demand" for cheap drugs (medical, I mean) but we're never going to get it outside of some major government reform and challenge to the Health Industry. There's a demand for affordable homes and apartments, but we don't have them either but they are overstocked on McMansions most people can't afford.

So yes, they respond to a general demand, but ultimately offer to fill that demand if they can turn a buck. The result for the consumer, isn't "voting with their dollars" but more like a bubble test where you can pick one of several options on offer to meet that individual demand.

But from our perspective, our power is in production and our potential to build class solidarity and self-leadership and take over that production.

[Catma]

Would you accept a voting system where your vote counted for less than others?

[Comrade #138672]

Very nice answers. Thank you.

[Human Lefts]

Building on prior comments, I would like to introduce public relations and marketing. The two exist to manipulate your way of thinking about a firm. They will show you BP commercials about how much they're helping with the clean up. They will go to Congress and testify. They hide the stuff that will hurt their business and highlight what will help. The amount of oppressive business practices, beginning with business being oppressive to begin with, is astronomical. Start looking into industries. Check out who manufactures cell phone and how. Look up where cocoa beans for European chocolate comes from. Find out how the produce in your super market is collected. Then, if you were to try to learn about everything you buy, imagine how long it would take you. You simply don't have the resources to do it.