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Strategy: The Ethical Boycott

An overview of ethical boycotts as a community strategy, with links to further information.

Publisher: æonTribe

An overview of ethical boycotts as a community strategy, with links to further information.

What is an ethical boycott?

An ethical boycott is an effort by a large number of people to encourage a change in the behavior of an offender by refusing to do business with them. In a market economy, it is the consumer equivalent to the ancient tribal practice of “shunning” social offenders. Ethical boycotts are nonviolent, well-organized, highly visible and effective examples of what Adam Smith termed “the invisible hand” 1 of the market system, which was his term for the near invisible power of the consumer to guide the behavior of the producer.

Moral imperative

When confronting settler-colonial violence, ethnic cleansing, genocide, imperialist aggression, or international corporate crimes, the duty to boycott can become a moral imperative.

Craig Mokhiber, a former senior UN human rights official, noted that in cases of extreme criminality such as ethnic cleansing or genocide, boycotting is “not only a moral imperative and constitutional and human right but also an international legal obligation."

History

The word boycott first appeared in the English language in the late 19th century, when Irish tenant farmers became furious at the ruthless rent-collection policies of Captain Charles Boycott, an English land agent. The tenants organized together, refused to work the lands, and successfully ostracized Boycott both economically and socially.

There have been many other successful boycotts, including:

  • The 1791 English boycott of slave-produced sugar
  • The 35 year long effort to end South African Apartheid
  • The 1959 Alabama Bus Boycott that launched the US Civil Rights Movement
  • The Twitter/X Boycott following Elon Musk’s takeover and far right censorship of content
  • The Trump Boycott of 2018-2020
  • Many more….

Two kinds of boycott

There are two kinds of boycotts: primary and secondary. A primary boycott is a decision not to business with a specific organization whose policies you disagree with. A secondary boycott is directed at a third party, for example someone who sells products made by the company being boycotting. Secondary boycotts are illegal under U.S. labor laws.

Primary goal

The primary goal of an ethical boycott is to convince the target to change their behavior to better serve the common good. Following the principle of Ahimsa (nonviolence) 2 and Satyāgraha (truth-force) 3, the ultimate goal of any ethical boycott should be to seek a mutually beneficial solution for both the target and the aggrieved community. This does not mean to accept a compromise that goes against moral principles. It means to seek healing and growth rather than revenge and destruction.

Wide adoption

Boycotts are most effective when taken as a widely-adopted collective action. This requires thorough research, clearly stated goals,strategic planning, strong community alliances, and a commitment to stay the course in the face of active repression — often for many years.

Strategic focus

When an entire industry is locked in a race to the bottom, even well-intentioned participants must follow the industry trends. In such cases it is often most effective to focus a boycott on the worst offenders. This is a variation of the “Divide and Conquer” tactic that is so often used by political elites to keep a population divided and distracted.

Resisting repression

Political and business elites are terrified of the ethical boycott strategy achieving widespread adoption within a domesticated population. Due to a boycott’s immediate and potentially extreme effectiveness, the concept is regularly ignored or ridiculed in corporate media.

It is difficult to compel masses of people not to not do something. Therefore, effective boycotts are often soon met with violent repression. The organizers are typically targeted first. They nay be harassed, slandered, fired, bribed, blackmailed, jailed and when all else fails eliminated. 4 Many eventually successful boycotts took years or decades to succeed, and too many community organizers have been lost along the way. The best defenses against repression are in-depth research, strategic planning, strong alliances, and solid community solidarity. This often take years of preparation.

Achievements

A successful ethical boycott can achieve many things:

  1. Convince a large number of people to exercise their inherent right to not do business with the offender.
  2. Spread negative information about the offender.
  3. Threaten an organization’s bottom line — its net profit.
  4. In the case of corporate “personhoods”, threatens market share, shareholder value, executive compensation, and long-term damage to the brand.
  5. Warn competing organizations not to imitate the problematic tactics of the offender.
  6. Ultimately convince the offender to change inappropriate behavior.
  7. Help rebalance the tendency of late capitalist oligarchies to tilt in favor of the largest and best connected businesses.

Sources and further information

Footnotes

  1. The invisible hand is a metaphor inspired by the Scottish economist and moral philosopher Adam Smith that describes the incentives which free markets sometimes create for self-interested people to accidentally act in the public interest, even when this is not something they intended. ↩︎

  2. Ahimsa is the ancient Indian principle of nonviolence that applies to actions toward all living beings. It is a key virtue in Jainism, Buddhism, and Hinduism. Similar concepts are found in the Ancient Greek commandment to, “first do no harm”, and in the Christian commandment to, “Love your enemies”. (Mathew 5:43-48) ↩︎

  3. Satyāgraha, or “truth force”, is a particular form of nonviolent resistance or civil resistance. Someone who practices satyagraha is a satyagrahi. The term satyagraha was coined and developed by Mahatma Gandhi as early as 1919. Gandhi practiced satyagraha as part of the Indian independence movement and also during his earlier struggles in South Africa for Indian rights. Satyagraha theory influenced Martin Luther King Jr.’s and James Bevel’s campaigns during the Civil Rights Movement in the United States, as well as Nelson Mandela’s struggle against apartheid in South Africa. ↩︎

  4. The term “eliminated” is government NewSpeak for “murdered”. ↩︎

Links

Community Tool Box: Chapter 33. Section 17. Organizing a Boycott Ethical Consumer: History of Successful Boycotts BSD Movement Mondoweiss: The Moral Obligation to Boycott