Of course, and that can only be a reason to avoid doing easily avoidable harm if the *only* reason ever to do anything is to extricate oneself from an exploitative society. But whoever said that?
(Or, just to be very pedantic, which is almost certainly another of my horrible, university-acquired bourgeois vices, if any and all regulating of one's consumptive practices necessarily amounts to some thwarting of one's highest reason for action, say, bringing about, with others, fundamental social change.)
I haven't suggested that one regulates one's consumptive practices as a way to bring about a revolution, to change an exploitative society into an egalitarian one -- mainly because I don't think it's true.
There are other desiderata of human action than revolution; one of them is *avoiding doing harm*, particularly easily avoidable harm.
I only regulate my consumptive practices because I can thereby easily avoid doing some easily avoidable harm, and not because I think that somehow doing so will bring about the revo!
Likewise, even if one's highest aim is to bring about the revo, how can that be an excuse for not easily avoiding easily avoidable harm when doing so doesn't thwart one's highest aim?
Despite Carroll's name calling -- which now descends to the absurdity of saying I criticize laziness, I who have done nothing today but play with my new cat, read for pleasure, and answer email -- I think we've read past each other because of this confusion between acting so as to bring about fundamental social change and acting so as to avoid easily avoidable harm, that is, acting to further one's highest aims of action and acting to further other aims.
I think I have an obligation to do both, especially when I can do both without thwarting either. Bookchin is right to criticize the former in terms of "lifestyle anarchism," a position with which I very much agree. But that in no way relieves me of the obligation, in my view, to avoid doing easily avoidable harm.
Let's take an easier example. How can we attain the liberation of women in American society? Only by a mass movement, which I think I'm obligated to work toward. But I also, as an individual, am obligated to avoid doing harm, including, say, sexual violence, which is one of the social forces that constitutes women's oppression. So while the larger social aim cannot be achieved but through collective action and solidarity, I'm still obligated to avoid doing harm to individual women as an individual man, even if doing so won't bring about the overall goal I seek. (And the only connection between these two aims of my action is that I'm obligated to do both of them. I am *not* arguing that the only way to bring about collective action is to first *purify* oneself. That's one point, but it isn't mine, and I don't hold it.)
Even while I work toward the liberation of women as a social goal, and I act to avoid harming women as an individual man, I still share in the privileges of patriarchy, sometimes unawares, sometimes even against my will. But not being able to avoid doing *all* harm doesn't relieve me of the obligation to avoid doing all the harm that I can avoid, particularly harm that is easily avoidable.
Best, Kendall Clark