I want to be picky about this because "boycotts" and "strikes" are pretty fundamentally different and the difference matters -- people need to get that boycotts, though important, aren't nearly as effective as strikes and you don't get the same brownie points for being in one
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The line can be fuzzy but a strike means you withhold your *labor* and a boycott means you withhold your *money* Strikes are carried out by *workers* and boycotts are carried out by *customers*
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This doesn't cover everything Like I agree that a rent strike counts as a strike, and so do the various strikes by, say, transit riders (where you actually don't go to work, as a group, because you haven't been given a safe and affordable way to get there)
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I would say that the broader definition is that a strike is refusing to perform an action for which there is an obligation A boycott is refusing to perform an action seen as voluntary NBA players who don't play games are striking, NBA fans who don't come to games are boycotting
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The reason there is an important moral difference here is that the connotation of a strike is that if the strike fails you will be punished You will be fired or evicted or even arrested By contrast when a boycott fails, the boycotters just go back to business as usual
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This is why boycotts are kind of bullshit much of the time, and need a lot of work to actually be effective (The famous Montgomery Bus Boycott, which was a boycott and not a strike because they couldn't afford to actually not go to work the whole time, took LOTS of organizing)
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The whole thing is that a strike and a boycott pull in opposite directions The point of a strike is for the person providing a service to tell their customers "This service is essential, you need me" The point of a boycott is the *customer* saying "I *don't* need you"
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Which means if the service actually is that important and essential -- which it often is, if the company is doing something harmful enough to be worth boycotting -- boycotting is fucking hard
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The segregated buses in Montgomery sucked because almost everyone not rich enough to drive did, in fact, *have* to take the bus and the daily humiliation of being forced to move for white riders was something most working-class Black people *had* to just deal with
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So trying to protest that by having a huge chunk of their customer base refuse to take the bus at all during a long enough period of time to hurt their budget was really risky, and painful, and expensive
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Lots of people giving their time and money to run an informal taxi/carpool service (the "Freedom Riders") Extreme social pressure from the community to demand that everyone keep on doing it and not "cheat" (centered mostly around the church)
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A boycott that's actually pretty easy for you to do that doesn't affect your life much is... probably a boycott that isn't gonna do jack shit The company already wrote people like you off as part of the general churn of free-market competition
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Hence why all the people who said they were going to stop eating at Chick-Fil-A didn't come to much in the end They were already competing with a bunch of other fast food brands, they knew you were just one demo they were advertising to among many, it was a blip
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Customers as a class don't really have that much power, Marxism 101 is that power is wielded by *workers* and that "consumer power" is a lie Solidarity among customers is pretty damn rare
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Like the Montgomery Bus Line actually depended on a large working-class Black population that was their customer base In other circumstances they could've just been like "We're the racist bus company, that's our brand!"
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All the people going "Well then I'LL eat at Chick-Fil-A ALL THE TIME to own the libs"
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End of conversation
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