Someone argued with me that buying stuff enables capitalism and that buying things in itself is already performing capitalism. They then went on to say that the best way to overcome capitalism is by simply not participating in it (instead of revolution, something they explicitly rejected). When I asked how they intend to do that they told me that they work at a cooperative, only take public transport, and live in council housing. They, therefore, don’t participate in capitalism, and doing so is a personal choice, not a systematic one.
I have a hard time accepting that as a viable solution since they forgot that: not everyone can work in a cooperative or live in council housing by the simple virtue of not being available and that they completely ignored stuff like buying groceries or that public transport is still run for profit (at least in my country).
Are there more counters to their argument? Am I missing something? Do they have a valid argument in the end?
No, it is impossible in every single, molecular way. If you go to live to a forest, that’s private or state owned property, therefore you are interacting with capitalism anyway. Working in a cooperative mean you are doing work which basically means selling your work force for money so I don’t understand how that person thinks that’s not capitalism, public transport is State owned goods so again that has a repercussion in capitalism because it is produced and bought somewhere, so again the same shit, and the housing is the same train of thought. Even if you go and live to the EZLN you will still do capitalism because they require electricity and other stuff from the Mexican government so yeah, same shit.
Basically until capitalism is no more, you can’t, even China does this, that’s why the have a market oriented economy, because you can’t escape from it. There’s is no ethical consumption under capitalism.