Maria Gilmore wrote:
> ...how's about the option of buying books
> via the Net? Directly from the
> publisher, or thru an outlet like ZNet? I've
> done this; find a book at the megastore,
> get the ISBN off it and order it elsewhere.
Of course it's an option. Let me try this again (not just one more time, because I'm going to beat this drum more or less continually as long as I remain a marxist and don't decay into a merely private person).
As consumers we *are* individuals, individuals living the best as we can in this damn capitalist world. We make our decisions according to what is best for us as private persons. So we buy our books from borders, from wahrs, from hole-in-the-wall used book stores, wherever, just as we buy our food and our shoes and our x's and y's and z's on the same general principle. Merelly private decisions, merely private preferences. (I got used to boycotting Folgers during the 80s --it was an organized boycott -- and discovered other coffees I like better, and don't buy Folgers anymore: mere personal choices now, since the organized boycott is over. I would not dream of saying anyone else should boycott Folgers.)
But sometimes within this large sloppy conglomeration of activities which are not so much a movement as the scattered potential for one, an issue arises around which the potential unity of many can be founded, a political boycott gets called based on something more than merely personal 'druthers. Then we not only honor that boycott, we seek to expand it, we seek to explain to many how honoring that boycott is based on much larger principles than the mere dislike of a union-busting bookstore). If the solidarity extends widely (that is, if the overall struggle, including the boycott but not limited to it, grows stronger) than we not only intensify our efforts at persuasion but begin to bring pressure to bear on everyone within reach to honor that boycott whether they want to or not. We hoot at them. Perhaps we throw rotten vegetables at them or make malicious phone calls to foul up their sleep or we ostracize them socially or we beat them up or (when the political unity becomes great enough) we may shoot them.
But these are all political decisions, not moralistic shit, made *collectively* within the organized movement, not mere personal preferences made by randome individuals such as K or Maria. Maria is not quite as bad as K, she does not directly attack a comrade for not honoring her merely personal (idiotic) preferences, but still her post is obnoxious.
Carrol