[lbo-talk] Re: HOW THE ANTI-WAR MOVEMENT IS BLOWING IT: REVISITED

[Liza Featherstone]

Thanks, John. I just put The Consumer Trap on my immediate reading list for
the book I'm writing on Wal-Mart, which will have lots of discussion of the
limitations of consumer campaigns (though I'm in favor of them, of course,
just think, for a lot of reasons, they need to be an avenue to something
else). Can't wait to read it. Is Michael Dawson the same Michael Dawson
who's on this listserv?

By the way, I think Dave means ordering a Whopper at McDonald's -- because
they don't sell Whoppers, Burger King does. Which I would have to agree is a
very silly sort of resistance indeed.

Liza


> From: John Mage <jmage at panix.com>
> Reply-To: lbo-talk at lbo-talk.org
> Date: Fri, 31 Oct 2003 15:55:12 -0500
> To: lbo-talk at lbo-talk.org
> Subject: [lbo-talk] Re: HOW THE ANTI-WAR MOVEMENT IS BLOWING IT: REVISITED
> 
> dave dorkin wrote:
> 
>> On the other hand, I consistantly run into the other type of
>> pathology
> [i.e. "the politics of difference and
> micro-resistance (i.e. [not?]ordering a Whopper at McDonalds)"]
>> whether I am doing grad school organizing, legal organizing,
>> demonstrations or what have you. There are probably more of them on
>> any one big campus than there are all the people you name.  they...
>> can be some of the biggest opponents of a sustained and organized
>> politics.
> 
> "pathology" seems a bit strong, if not downright wrong, to me.
> 
> Right now i'm reading our Michael Dawson's (so far, i've read the first
> third) excellent _The Consumer Trap_ (U.of Illinois Press, 2003). Early
> on Michael has the best chiasmus i've read in years, at least since
> Mahmood Mamdani's critique of one type of justification for colonialist
> rule in Africa ("the force of tradition turns out on examination to be
> the tradition of force"). Michael writes that the US media has had few
> priorities higher than enforcing as common sense the dogma that "when it
> comes to using and procuring commodities, ordinary Americans get what
> they choose, rather than choose among variants of what they are going to
> get".
> 
> Michael's thesis is that this particular false consciousness is critical
> to the successful self-reproduction of the really existing US model, and
> that its maintenance requires a continuous and enormous effort. If this
> false consciousness is in fact breaking down as widely as Dave suggests,
> and if Michael's thesis is correct, this is not an obstacle but an
> opportunity.
> 
> Confession - i'm an enormous fan of _Adbusters_ (the design negation of
> MR). Over time they have moved from an amusing send-up of corporate
> manipulated consumerism to a biting critique of US imperialism. Why
> could this not be a model, if micro-resistance is in fact this widespread?
> 
> john mage
> 
> 
> 
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