I'm sorry, but I don't fetishize workers. Your argument is like saying that we shouldn't tear down the prisons because workers put so much work into them. Fuck that workerist stupidity.
[WS:] I agree. I thing much of the demand for the organic food is not really about food, but about hippie "back to earth" nostalgia glorifying manual labor and simple farm life. The same nostalgia that brought us the Cultural Revolution and the Killing Fields. Since Wal Mart is the anti-thesis of this quaint simplicity, this enrages the hippies.
I also think building a Wal-Mart takes a lot of work indeed, but mainly mental rather than physical. Every moron can dig ditches, stack boxes, or move stuff through scanners. But it takes considerable logistical and organizational skills to build an efficient world-wide distribution network.
The problem with Wal Mart is not its business model, but the right wing politics of its management. Virtually every other major retailer uses a similar business model but without the Wal-Mart christofascist politics. Yet only Wal Mart is the lighting rod for all criticism. So it seems that Wal Mart is essentially a cultural icon that symbolizes both right wing business politics and the loss of nostalgic small town mom an pop shops.
One does not need to burn down Wal Marts or even nationalize them, all that is needed is a legislation with teeth that forces them to pay the full cost (including all externalities) of their operations, instead of passing them on the taxpayers.
I think that after Mao and Pol Pot everyone should be extremely cautious about any ideology calling for the dismantling of trade network, dispossession of "unproductive" intellectual workers, and a return to a rural utopia.
Wojtek