Occupy Wall Street criticism.

[the Left™]

So i have an extremely conservative basically white nationalist uncle from the south( who doesnt lul) but he posted a photo about how all of the protestors are wearing clothing by gap, using nikon cameras etc. Hes arguing that protesting against corporations is counter-intuitive because everything we use to survive is made by a corporation.

Herp derp. What do i say? I was thinking something along the lines of the protests on occupy wall street have nothing to do with corporate manufacturing of items but rather the pervasiveness of corprate greed in our "democracy"...

[eric922]

I hate this argument, because it is really foolish when you think about it. Everything is made by corporations so they have no choice but to wear clothes made by corporations. The fact that corporations exist and make most of our goods doesn't make them good, it just makes them a fact of our current society. Slavery used to be part of our society and slaves did a lot of things that helped the economy. That doesn't make slavery good, it just means our society was and still is fucked up.

[La Peur Rouge]

Corporations make those things? No, workers make those things.

What does he suggest? Should we all just make our own Nikon cameras?

[Engel]

So i have an extremely conservative basically white nationalist uncle from the south...

Basically disqualified anything he said by revealing that fact. But yeah in American life corporations are just a fact of life. A ugly fact but a fact nonetheless. The problem with them is that the majority of the factory workers and laborers in these corporations receive minimal benefits from the work they put in. Many don't even get basic medical care. That is usually reserved for management and the upper levels. On top of that, the way they try to exert their will on America's politics essentially bastardizes the whole concept of democracy.

[DaringMehring]

You could use that argument to "justify" any social system. You oppose slavery? While wearing shirts made from cotton from Plantations in the South? You oppose feudalism? While eating grain produced by Lordly Estates? Because it can be used to "justify" anything, the argument is meaningless.

[khlib]

That would be like saying a Soviet dissident can't really be a dissident if he uses products produced in state-run factories or eats bread made of grain from collectivized land.

[agnixie]

I hate this argument, because it is really foolish when you think about it. Everything is made by corporations so they have no choice but to wear clothes made by corporations. The fact that corporations exist and make most of our goods doesn't make them good, it just makes them a fact of our current society. Slavery used to be part of our society and slaves did a lot of things that helped the economy. That doesn't make slavery good, it just means our society was and still is fucked up.

That has been my response to all those - we need to build alternate structures and take over production for this not to happen as capitalist is a totalitarian, pervasive system that results in a situation where important and even essential material is entirely controlled by them. By their argument we should starve, go naked, and have no infrastructure, but at the same time we should not try to remedy to that as it's "theft"

[Binh]

Show him a picture of the protesters. Most of those kids are pretty grungy/punk rock.

[RedHal]

omg the almightly godly corporations, if we never had them, we'd be running around naked with wooden spears

[Bardo]

Is your uncle opposed to outsourcing American jobs to China? I bet the majority of everything he owns is produced in China.

[Fawkes]

Workers made those things, not corporations.

When you live in a capitalist society, it's pretty much impossible to exist completely outside of it, all the more evidence that this is a systemic problem.