I agree James wrote a great article, Wojtek, but you seem to have read a different article than I did. I don't know how you can interpret Roddick's story as an inspiring one that offers "hope that the Left can think progressively and adapt to changing times." Roddick's is a cautionary tale of self-serving entrepreneurs' chameleon-like ability to exploit the world's
poor and line their own pockets by adopting a patina of progressivism. Roddick was a palpable fraud.
[WS:] We must have indeed read two different articles. I personally think that selfless-altruism to save the "wretched of the earth" is a bunch of crock - nothing more than thinly veiled self-serving posturing to boost one's radical credentials, image and social standing. I have much more respect for those who help themselves and teach others how to do likewise & provide others with some tools to make that self help more efficient. Roddick seem to do just that and by doing so she accomplished, imho, far more than all the long-winded self-styled radicals and pomo theorists combined.
Far from "exploiting the poor" which I presume is a lefty code word for handouts i.e. philanthropy or manna falling from the sky, Roddick tried to help them being more self-sufficient by providing market access for their products. Obviously, there limits what a single person or an institution can do in this respect, but that seems to be a far superior way of helping the poor than guilt tripping and exhortations against "yuppies" practiced by self-styled radicals. I would go as far as saying that buying their handicrafts was probably more effective than, say, training them to be IT technicians or industrial workers with zero prospects of employment in their own countries.
And that it is subsumed under the rubric of capitalism? That reminds me of an anecdote of a staunch Irish atheist who was once asked by his own son whether he should marry the girl he loved in a church, as she insisted. "Of course, if you love the girl." replied the father. "All that church stuff is nothing but empty babble that does not matter a bit." So whether it is called, capitalism, Christianity or shit on a stick - it is all but empty talk. What matters is the material effect it has.
Wojtek