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actually, dyze, people can organize and have a considerable impact on the actions of firms...even a freidmanite would admit that--from a neoliberal viewpoint (same as friedmanite except more dangerous because operationalized) a firm exists to make profits for its shareholders.
well, the ability to generate profit presupposes demand.
a highly organized boycott could impact on that--the threat of a really large boycott is like what the threat of a general strike used to be--something that
would send fear coursing through capitalists--shut down demand and you can watch them squirm. same thing with a strike--you can service demand if you cant get the commodities produced--whence the neoliberal terror of powerful, coherent trade unions.
political pressure in general--organized, sustained pressure--can have very significant effects on how tncs operate--the corporate social responsibility audits i posted links to earlier are very expensive undertakings and only exist as devices that enable firms to (a) become somewhat transparent to themselves--always a problem, but even worse if your firm is little more than a financial and design lynchpin inside a huge supply pool and (b) to give corporations some basis for claiming that they are at least trying to act "ethically"---the only reason firms are concerned with this is because they have been forced to be concerned with it.
inidividually, of course, we are all equally powerless.
like in this messageboard, where individual statements live in neat little boxes.
individuals have no power, unless they control capital.
the rest of us, so long as we do not organize, are fucked.
for example, caterpillar's management must have made a calculation concerning threats of a boycott: 1. the case being made by activists seems shaky at its central linkage--holding caterpillar responsible for crimes against humanity committed by the end user--which modifies the equipment before they turn them on civilian residences. 2. caterpillar's demand is not primarily consumer demand, more b-2-b so it would not feel threatened by a boycott.
the first point means that the firm feels it can defend itself.
the second means that it does not feel directly threatened.
the activist groups are trying to use publicity and mobilization to strengthen its case. caterpillar is trying to ride this out. there we are.
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a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle
spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear
it make you sick.
-kamau brathwaite
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