That’s all a little too cut-and-dry. Some responsibility does fall on workers, but the situation is so often beyond their control it’s pointless to blame them for it. If you can do something that doesn’t contribute to exploitation, please do it. That’s one of the many reasons I’m studying to be a teacher, rather than taking my English skills to a contractor on the Naval Base (which I could easily do, and which would make me at least ten grand more a year when I get my master’s). 

There’s an interesting passage in The Grapes of Wrath having to do with banks tearing down farm houses and kicking people off their land. They always ask the guy in the tractor why he’s making a living by helping to ruin people’s lives, and he always responds something like “I’ve got kids to feed too, times is hard. Blame the company,” or something. And then the blame goes up and up, to the next highest guy, to the next highest guy after him, until you get to the board of directors who wants to blame the stockholders.

What that says, basically, is that it is the system that’s at fault, and it is pointless to blame people just trying to pay the mortgage, but at some point responsibility does fall on someone - if that means all of us collectively. Because, I mean, how many acts of exploitation and even violence have occurred because someone just needs to pay the mortgage? It’s really tricky.

But no, I definitely don’t believe lifestyle activism accomplishes anything. It’s nothing more than passive activism through consumer choice - operating under the capitalist class’ most basic premise that the market is itself democratic (hint: it’s not). It only adds legitimacy to the beast.

What it really takes is class consciousness, direct action, and the building of grassroots level structures of support so the guy in the tractor can say “fuck you” to the bank in solidarity with the farmer without his kids starving to death. That’s one of the reasons I still post about and support the Occupy movement - because it started out as an expression of class consciousness and has evolved into a loose structure of action and support (i.e occupy our homes).

Huh. Thank you for prompting me to write.