There has been a great deal of interest in the lists I posted on Facebook laying out the products of certain corporate malefactors. People want to avoid doing business with these companies, mostly over the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
But I would have us think a bit deeper. These malefactors are owned by the oligarchs of the Americas and Europe and they are more akin to the Russian oligarchs than they are to us regular citizens of anywhere.
In the late 1980s and early 1990s there was a great deal of American triumphalism. The only ones that should have been celebrating were the plutocrats of the world. Because the collapse of the Soviet bloc really meant not freedom for the former members but rather the end of the class war, with the plutocrats the victors.
It was not just the Soviet bloc that collapsed, but also heavily regulated capitalism, in favor of predatory unrestrained capitalism, which was then exported by force to every corner of the globe. This was done not just by American plutocrats, though we have some of the worst, but also the new oligarchs of the former communist countries, still totalitarian but no longer communist. To wit: some of the greatest private fortunes in the world now belong to citizens of China.
If we the people want to save the biosphere, or want protection from climate disruption, or want a fair distribution of wealth, or want our global commons back from the hands of the privatizers, or want equality under the law, or free and fair elections, we must be prepared to re-wage the class war. But not with guns and bombs. That will not work. They overmatch us in that sort of weapon and always have.
The weapons we have are as follows: our money, our labor, and our commitment. We win by building another societal structure along side the rotting corpse of the plutocracy. This means not working for them if at all possible. It means doing and making things outside of that system.
Which brings me back to these company lists. A good many of the people I know can't boycott because they never buy the things made by these companies. Or so they believe. But these large transnationals have their hands in many things and it takes research to follow it. They often have tentacles into the "organic" market.
Then there is the matter of why people buy any of this. We may be able to avoid soda, bottled water, and processed cheese easily enough. But how about toilet paper or baby formula. Baby formula? What happened to the built in and natural feeding station provided by a mother's body?
But I digress. The point is that there are things that regular folks legitimately need that are mostly available only as corporate made and only in large corporate supermarkets.
In 2020 I wrote an essay about the institutional abuse meted out by various systems. This is abuse writ large. Authoritarianism, Capitalism, Patriarchy. And the delivery system for all of these is now the corporation. If you look at the behavior of the bulk of the sovereign corporations you will see anti-social behavior in them because it is the way the system is designed. It is a feature, not a bug.
One way in which these entities oppress people is through what can only be called trauma bonding. The corporation provides not only the job through which to make a living, but also all the products that the general population has been brainwashed into thinking they need. The average 10 year old can name 300 corporate logos and only 8 or 9 natural species.
If we want to overcome this system and take back our country and our planet for humans and other living things, we have to start here, with our own awareness and complicity. When we know how much we have been hypnotized and mystified by the corporate stories of reality, we will only then begin to see the exit ramp.
I am wondering if it would be useful on these malefic corporate product lists to include non-corporate alternatives for the products mentioned plus where to get those things. An example would be: instead of the Charmin' buy 7th Generation, available at your local natural for a store or co-op, or whole foods if you have no other choice.
This would take some research and is too big a job for one person perhaps. But I don't think the lists are nearly as effective without providing alternatives.