Moral demands for boycotts should come from *below* in the context of *labor struggles*, *not* from above in the context of "lifestyle" moralism of anti-consumerism & domestic sentimentality. Now, it's an _entirely_ different story if cleaning workers are demanding that feminists (& others) boycott this or that cleaning company (for instance because the company in question is using scabs and trying to break a strike) -- *then* they *should* boycott, by all means; but Ehrenreich doesn't say that they are.
Yoshie --------------
Maybe this is this is a better suited context to try to bring out the point I put my foot in my mouth to make earlier.
One can establish and live by a moral hierarchy (what's good, what's bad conduct with better to lesser in between) and most of us do (Kelley's often noted point). But we are all, also subjected to a whole network of power hierarchies in a society constructed around a division of labor. These two hierarchies can be, and often are purposefully manipulated through law, policy, capital, mass cultural propaganda, and personal relations into conflict with each other in order to control us and our social relations.
Okay, so then, when you decide at first for moral reasons that something is bad, and should be changed, your first impulse is to denounce it in moral terms--just as the issue presented itself to you in the first place. The first argument against your denouncement will be to implicate you in some form of hypocrisy, duplicity, or moral contradiction. Any or all of these may be accurate. Then what? You fall into the trap of proclaiming that your moral standing is superior to your opponent. Everyone knows that anyone who makes such a claim is either lying or desperate, i.e. loosing.
The next thing that happens is your self-interest, your material interest in the issue is examined by your opponent. If you have a material interest (through money, job, social or economic position) then, your moral outrage can be turned against you as hypocrisy. How can you denounce one form of hierarchy while benefiting from another?
It then follows that as a matter of power, it is always prudent to define a moral outrage in material terms of self-interest, in order to first defeat opposition through moral argument, and second to out maneuver any attempt to undercut your material interest through an illustration of its conflict with your own professed moral standing. (These ideas are derived from reading and thinking about Machiavelli).
Here is a classic example of what I am talking about. It just arrived in my e-mail, from savepacific:
"Mary Frances Berry has cancelled her appearance at a UC Riverside women's conference this weekend, citing a family health emergency.
Protestors had been set to converge on the town, a few miles east of Los Angeles. A long list of feminist academics, including several from UCR's Women's Studies Department, had issued a call to the conference sponsors to withdraw the invitation, because they said in part, `Berry does not share our core feminist values of inclusion and the equitable use of power. Hers are not the politics we want as a role model for feminists.' Berry also withdrew from a scheduled appearance at UC Santa Cruz in January."
Berry is being manipulated through a conflict between two hierarchical systems, one moral, one material. No matter what she does, she will be wrong. I don't know anything about Berry (except the pacifica struggles, where I could never figure out what she was doing). It is most likely that Berry should be a friend and supporter for the women who were set to protest her appearance. But now, her only possible move is to avoid the appearance, which renders her powerless, and undercuts her authoritative position as commissioner for OCR.
I'll try a personal and housework example. I actually like housework, and parenting--all the dumb little trips with children--going to the pediatrician, pick-ups from school, doing the bath and nightime routine, fixing lunches, meeting the teachers and other parents. So through the usual marriage wars, I used these as power games to undercut my ex whenever she decided to rag about some failing of mine as a husband.
I would argue that men should actually do almost all the domestic chores not because it is the right thing to do, but because it destroys the material basis for any moral outrage your wife wants to charge you with based on traditional gender divisions of labor. This is particularly effective in the battles over what's for dinner. If you buy it, prepare it and serve it, then by god you will like wants for dinner. If the rest of the family doesn't like it, fine. They can fix it next time. End of story. See? This is why I said morality is actually about power and ethics is about money.
Chuck Grimes
(I hope I don't regret this one as much as the other one)