Is "no ethical consumption under capitalism" a valid excuse for consumerism and buying dumb shit?

I've seen the argument get used countless times to try and discredit people who believe supporting less evil businesses in the interim of this system still existing actually does something.
Then, they follow it up by going "lel you fkn lifestylist youre changing nothing you think youre morally superior?"

They're right.

Elaborate

Your actions are insignificant and you shouldn't feel morally superior.

Surprisingly not
We're not just alienated from our labor but from the products of it, there are lots of stuff we want but that we can't make because they are not possible in capitalism, sure there are commodities that try to supply those needs but they will always be very underwhelming compared to what we could make in socialism.
Plus you're probably to poor to afford any of that shit on the first place.

oh my god

No. Buy the least amount possible.

It's a slogan against lifestylism, and I think it is right. Don't think you're doing anything grand or revolutionary by eating local or green etc.
That being said, I can't buy anything related to United Fruit. Imperialism, enslavement and murder of workers perpetrated by the company makes it very hard for me to enjoy the result.
Basically do as your conscience and taste dictates, but harbour no illusions of action or change.

If buying things is immoral why not just starve yourself to death in protest of capitalism? The bourgeoisie can't exploit the proletariat if they're all dead.

Your argument against not supporting bad business is not addressing the merits of the practice itself, but rather personal characteristics of some individuals engaging in it.
It's not insignificant when many people tag along

By my standards it is.

businesses with practices that are more greedy and exploitative than that of their counterparts*

You may have unrealistic standards for the current political climate, then. It's not a bad thing to try and effect change while on the road to the bigger picture

I'd say no, but it's kind of a complicated matter.
On one hand I think people should buy whatever they want but on the other I hate seeing people falling for consumerism and other capitalist bullshit.

My expectations aren't that great, but the actions I'd really consider revolutionary are actions that don't aid one capitalist over the other.

I don't think anybody is arguing that their actions are revolutionary in this instance
I think what Chomsky says here sort of parallels my thoughts my on the matter:
youtube.com/watch?v=ZNG2K533_2I

it's insignificant unless they do it every single time with every single firm that is doing evil shit, in which case they might as well just drop the act and start a revolution.

I'd rather keep listening to what I'm listening to.
Anyways as nice as it is, it's still just performing your basic role in the system. It's helpful, but not from a leftist perspective.

I always saw it as a stab back at people who accuse leftists of hypocrisy when they consume products made under capitalism, like "oh you hate capitalism, well whats that phone made under, OH CAPITALISM?! CHECKMATE!" or whatever

We can control the corporations
What we have to do is stop buying what they're selling
youtube.com/watch?v=8QCTk8_f_-U

no the phrase was meant as a defense against the argument that participating in any way in a capitalistic society robbed you of the ability to criticize it

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It's probably not the only thing.
It's just not one of the important things.

t. idiot who doesn't understand accelerationism

julian is a good character.

sauce for this fat elf slut?

No, "no ethical consumption under capitalism" is in spite of it's popularity not a very good argument in my opinion. It combines dogmatic certainty with a vague and ambiguous phrasing.
and no, I don't think it's a valid excuse for consumerism.

Consumerism is the cultural aspect of modern capitalism, we can't have communism as long as it remains the dominant cultural force, and we probably can't have capitalism with out it.
Ethical consumerism is a type of consumerism, albeit slightly less awful than vanilla consumerism, both have conspicuous consumption at their core, that is consumption as a way to display economic power, signaling social status and your place in the capitalist hierarchy.

No, it just means that socialists owning anything or buying food at a restaurant is not "hypocritical"

You are all spoooked. There is no ethical consumption under capitalism. Voting for a party is also a form of consumption, your ballot is your budget and the party is what you buy. It makes no difference whether you vote for literal Nazis or not. If voting changed anything, it would be illegal. The only thing that getting this or that party more seats changes is that it achieves majorities for changing laws and passing budgets (again, buying shit, we already covered why this doesn't matter: it is a spoook), obtaining super-majorities which then change constitutions, which doesn't matter as what matters is what people actually do and not what some piece of paper says, it is merely a formality and with people being spoooked by formalities they will do less against a government which does bad things while keeping the formalities, point is: If they weren't spoooked it wouldn't matter, so I win and you are wrong. If consumption choices changed anything, buying things would be illegal. I am not saying that ethics don't exist, I am just saying that ethical consumption doesn't exist. So when you do a horrible thing it is indeed horrible - but if you pay for the horrible thing to happen, that is okay, as there is, and that's a fact, no ethical consumption and no unethical consumption either; logically-mathematically what follows from this, is that the richer you are, the more ethical you are, as you can make the same horrible shit happen as a poor person without getting your own hands as dirty, and that's what Stirner surely meant (I have seen hundreds of memes about him, trust me on this). Charming a minor into having sex with you is wrong, but there is nothing wrong with paying for a child prostitute or pay to order a hit on someone or whatever. NO ETHICAL CONSUMPTION UNDER CAPITALISM, DUH. You should check out my channel, The Rational Despoooker National-Anarchist.

At least someone get's it.

it's a good argument against "ethical consumption as a big strategy" or "lmao they call themselves communist yet ate at mcdonalds once!"

but the thing is, there are situations where it is more ethical to buy thing or service x over thing or service y. I doubt any commie can make a case for why some small kebab place is literally the same as mcdonalds (or similar chain). whether one buys an iPhone or something else probably doesn't matter at all.

it is the same as with charity, really: it isn't that one shouldn't engage in it, it just can't act as a big strategy for most things. maybe for something like veganism consumption can help, it at least definitely advances the availability of vegan goods which makes the switch easier. why not something like accessibility stuff for people with disabilities, as well. I've donated money to a few things, such as a place that helps victims of sexual abuse and a leftist political party: there is nothing wrong with this as long as it doesn't replace other work.

those things matter, even if they don't lead to our desired communism.

tl;dr ethical consumption is ok, it just must not be put on a pedestal and we must avoid moralising others into it. not to forget the fact that poor people have much less opportunities to practice it, so it can even function as a tool of class domination.

I don't think it is. It's more of a statement than an real argument. and as the thread shows there is no unity on what the statement is supposed to mean.

You mean because at least McDonald's pay their taxes and give their employees minimum wage?

well it's good to hear someone is helping the victims of the SWP

jokes aside, I think we mostly agree. There is value to choosing the lesser evil when buying the thing you need anyway, but the ideology of ethical consumerism is still the ideology of consumerism. It's deriving identity and status from consuming the "right" things, and as you say, poor people have less opportunities to engage in it, so it becomes a way of asserting class in the same way classic consumerism uses Gucci or Adidas or whatever to assert success and class.

Consumer boycotts can be quite effective in preventing specific companies from doing specific heinous things.

People who say "no ethical consumption under capitalism" aren't WRONG, but they are almost universally just trying to justify their shitty consumerist tendencies.

sometimes it is used as a legitimate counter to stupid shit like "you like communism huh? how come you're using twitter and a smartphone, huh? they're products of capitalism, huh"

"There is no ethical consumption under capitalism" needs to be taken more literally. People keep inferring a spirit that isn't there. The point is that no matter how ethically you try to consume, the shit you buy has exploited someone along the way and even if that's not true, the people who get paid for making the commodity are going to participate in the economy by buying commodities and you have no control over what they buy, meaning your money will ultimately end up paying someone for exploiting people. The phrase is "there is no such thing as ethical consumption under capitalism" not "there is no such thing as unethical consumption under capitalism." It doesn't mean "go buy whatever you want, fuck it." It's a sober warning that even if you try not to buy anything made from exploitation, you can never escape the system.

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hands off my mctendies you commie

this is what it means

hardly rocket science when you consider that this is an anticapitalist board

newsweek.com/mcdonalds-accused-avoiding-eu12-billion-european-tax-309590
indeed

and as an European, the "kebab/pizza people avoid taxes!" thing seems to be a huge (possibly racist) meme, at least in my country. our police actually launched a campaign to catch tax-evading pizza restaurants, asking people to notify them of suspiciously low prices - 0 restaurants got caught.

the cheap pizza/kebab business model tends to function like this from what I've gathered: during the day, cheap prices, hardly any profit, during weekend nights: higher prices, lots of profit by staying open all night. and they're generally family businesses n the people work for relatively little money

I'm sure he was simply joking, though.

The meme isn't from here. It's the kind of shit that circulates on reddit and twitter. It's not the kind of shit that's for inspiring commies, but for prodding class-unconscious normies.

who said it is

I think he said that because of general distrust towards the petite bourg.

there's a meme on this board that the petite bourgeoisie is worse than bourgeoisie proper. i think it's horseshit, but whatever.

they also use cheaper ingredients. they know cheap stuff racks more people in. it's more work but they prefer it this way.

Nobody. OP asked about the meaning of the phrase so I gave an answer. You said it seems kind of obvious for where we are and I said it's not from here (as in how it pertains to the board isn't really relevant).