re: comments on shoes and class from Jim D.

[Blair Sandler <blairs@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

Jim: responding to David Brennan, you refer to "subsumed class
processes" and then say you don't see the point of calling them
"non-class" processes. But they're *not* non-class, they're
subsumed class. What they're *not* is exploitation. For me, the
point here is that if we just talk about class, then conceptually
all the stuff in "class" moves together. It's perhaps more
difficult to conceive the overdetermined effects (in the words of
Laclau and Mouffe) of changes in the relationships between
different kinds of class processes. It's like looking at details
through a finer lens.

Secondly: you ask whether the ethical consumer must go shoeless.
I'm all for ethical consuming, but most of the time it's
impossible, in the sense that we face a set of choices all of
which bear unpleasant consequences for some humans somewhere.
Perhaps you read Mark Dowie's critique of "socially responsible
investing" in the Nation, a while back? He argued that buying
stock from one company rather than another based on "ethics" was
probably irrelevant compared to the power of organized boycotts
and other social movements. Pressures from shareholders may have
been more effective than sales of stock by shareholders.
Analogously, perhaps instead of worrying so much about where we
buy our shoes, we should organize protests against TNCs, form
worker collectives, attempt to influence organized government to
regulate TNCs, etc.

Regards,

Blair Sandler