Monday, August 20, 2007

By Nico Rahim

During a recent trip to Mexico I spoke with an acquaintance who is a gringo expat in Mexico City working for a community radio station with strong ties to La Otra Campana.  While discussing the immanence of revolution in Mexico and the lack of any coherent revolutionary movement in the US she brought up two very important points: 1) the US has vast independent media resources yet lacks a movement for it to mobilize behind, 2) in the US activism focuses too heavily on the point of consumption rather than on the point of production.

We see the first point with the great success of such programs as DemocracyNow!, publications like Adbusters, and websites and blogs such like Guerilla News Network.  There are Indymedia websites for almost every major city in the US, though it should be noted that many Indymedia sites throughout the nation are dormant, inactive, and infected with spam.  Radical print is struggling in the US with publications like Clamor, Lip, and Kitchen Sink all going under within the past year, but I will save that discussion for another article.

The problem with many independent media outlets--Democracy Now! comes to mind--is that it has taken the status quo’s practice of objective journalism and has given it a leftist slant.  This guise of objectivity has neutered its revolutionary thrust--forgive the patriarchal metaphor.  Granted, we are talking propaganda, but the New York Times propagates inaction, the spectacle of an informed citizenry, one that is able to make rational decisions within the proper political dialog.  Make no mistake, the conclusions within the proper political dialog are rational for that match its premises:  America’s reign as the sole superpower must be sustained by any means, the increase in the private wealth of a few creates benefits for society as a whole, and any infringement of an individual’s acquisition of private wealth is an infringement on one’s fundamental rights as a free individual. 

Independent media, and Indymedia specifically, does address these issues and calls into question the premises, but the void created from the missing mobilization of leftist groups recreates the culture of inaction that is propagated by the institutional media, only this time through the spectacle of dissent. 

The second point, and probably more important, is that activism in the US is primarily based around consumerism.  I am guilty of this, though my perspective on the issue is more nuanced than that of my expat friend.  I primarily buy local and organic produce, my cigarettes are organic and my coffee is fair trade.  I stay away from large chains, I do my banking at a local cooperative credit union, I stay away from Starbucks on multiple grounds, from its disastrous effect on local business to its financial support of the Israeli Defense Service.  But consumer activism will not create the radical change that is now so greatly needed.  It often seems this green consumerism is just another marketing ploy for people to live with less guilt while still fulfilling the only thing that is ever asked/demanded of them: to consume. 

To be fair, and to pat myself on the back, “ethical consumerism” does have its benefits.  The rate of growth for fair trade, organic, and sweatshop-free products are now outpacing the rates of growth within the greater economy in most developed nations.  There are quantifiable gains when one consumes with one’s ecological footprint in mind.  But by focusing on the point of purchase alone compliments the standard modus operandi.  New markets are created to appease the new breed of ethical consumers, and as we have seen with the watering down of organic standards, when ecological and social ethical standards are forced to compete with corporate, profits ethical standards lose.

It was interesting to hear Subcomandante Marcos comment on the Zapatistas’ taste for Coca-Cola, while speaking at CEDECI in San Cristobal de las Casas, Chiapas.  Some, mostly gringos, have pointed out the hypocrisy of serving, selling, and consuming Coke given the Zapatistas’ position on the privatization of public land and resources--the Coca-Cola Company loves to buy water rights in areas that thirst for clean drinking water.  For Marcos, those who dwell on the ethical dilemmas posed by enjoying Coke or not enjoying Coke totally miss the point.  Ignoring the public health costs of the sugary syrup that is heavily subsidized by the US Farm Bill, is Coca-Cola, at its point of consumption, a necessarily a bad thing?

For Marcos, all the injustices found at the various points in Coca-Cola’s supply-chain, should be addressed at those various points.  If people take back the water supply, take over the factories, and decide that they still want to produce Coke, then let them produce Coke.  But, I’m inclined to think that if people did take over the means of production, they probably wouldn’t want to use there resources producing Coke.

When looking at the two issues, independent media with no movement and consumer based activism, we are in actuality looking at the same issue presented in two ways.  Independent media makers work on the point of production, often trying to influence an audience who takes in the information at the point of consumption, while ethical consumerism works at the point of consumption to influence the point of production.  And both, at this point, are utter failures, at least when looking at them in a macro-political perspective of creating a powerful counter-project.

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Posted in: Wildcat Economics