Beyond Consumer Capitalism E-Book

Justin Lewis

• Herausgeber: John Wiley & Sons
• Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 383

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2014

Beschreibung

Consumer capitalism dominates our economy, our politics and our culture. Yet there is a growing body of research from a range of disciplines that suggests that consumer capitalism may be past its sell-by date. Beyond Consumer Capitalism begins by showing how, for people in the developed world, consumer capitalism has become economically and environmentally unsustainable and is no longer able to deliver its abiding promise of enhancing quality of life . This cutting-edge book then asks why we devote so little time and effort to imagining other forms of human progress. The answer, Lewis suggests, is that our cultural and information industries limit rather than stimulate critical thinking, keeping us on the treadmill of consumption and narrowing our vision of what constitutes progress. If we are to find a way out of this cul de sac, Lewis argues, we must begin by analysing the role of media in consumer capitalism and changing the way we organize media and communications. We need a cultural environment that encourages rather than stifles new ideas about what guides our economy and our society. Timely and compelling, Beyond Consumer Capitalism will have strong appeal to students and scholars of media studies, cultural studies and consumer culture.

Leseprobe

Beyond Consumer Capitalism

Beyond Consumer Capitalism

Media and the Limits to Imagination

JUSTIN LEWIS

polity

Copyright © Justin Lewis 2013

The right of Justin Lewis to be identified as Author of this Work has been asserted in accordance with the UK Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

First published in 2013 by Polity Press

Polity Press65 Bridge StreetCambridge CB2 1UR, UK

Polity Press350 Main StreetMalden, MA 02148, USA

All rights reserved. Except for the quotation of short passages for the purpose of criticism and review, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher.

ISBN: 978-0-7456-7166-6

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

The publisher has used its best endeavours to ensure that the URLs for external websites referred to in this book are correct and active at the time of going to press. However, the publisher has no responsibility for the websites and can make no guarantee that a site will remain live or that the content is or will remain appropriate.

Every effort has been made to trace all copyright holders, but if any have been inadvertently overlooked the publisher will be pleased to include any necessary credits in any subsequent reprint or edition.

For further information on Polity, visit our website: www.politybooks.com

Contents

Acknowledgements

1  Introduction: The problems of consumer capitalism in the twenty-first century – and why we find it so difficult to appreciate them

Part I  Stretching beyond its limits: The tired machinery of consumer capitalism

2  Consumer capitalism as a cul-de-sac

3  The environmental, economic and social constraints of consumer capitalism

Part II  Selling stories

4  The insatiable age

5  Tales of sales: The politics of advertising

Part III  Reporting consumer capitalism

6  Disposable news and democracy: Rethinking the way we report the world

7  Disposable news, consumerism and growth

Part IV  Waste and retrieval

8  Obsessed with obsolescence: Confusing hyperconsumption with progress

9  Imagining a different world

Notes

References

Index

Acknowledgements

Many thanks to Kim Humphery and Rick Maxwell for their shrewd and well-informed comments on the manuscript; to Janice Gillian for her wise observations; to Andrea Drugan, Lauren Mulholland, Joe Devanny and Susan Beer at Polity for their professionalism; and to Chloe Lewis for keeping it real.

1

Introduction: The problems of consumer capitalism in the twenty-first century – and why we find it so difficult to appreciate them

People in the developed world are wealthier than at any time in human history. We have access to a vast array of consumer goods clamouring to improve the quality of our lives. A bounty of information and entertainment is available at the flick of a finger tip. Opportunities for communication abound: we can phone and email, text and tweet, post and blog, flickr and facebook, skype and type, all with a global reach and instantaneous response.

Despite this superabundance – and even before the ‘credit crunch’ arrived to expose the uncertainty of debt-dependent economies – there was little sense that we were living in a golden age. For all their material advantages, children born into the twenty-first century are rarely seen as a lucky generation. The future is rich, instead, with a sense of foreboding.

Doubts hover like storm clouds on the horizon: dwindling economic security, mounting debt, environmental degradation and a creeping sense that a system based on permanent economic growth is unsustainable. There is also a widespread feeling that the way we live now is not quite as good as it could be. The idea that ‘things can only get better’ has been replaced by the lament ‘is that all there is?’1

What once drove us forward has become a treadmill, requiring all our effort and energy to simply stay where we are. This sense of stasis is more than simply a reflection of the human condition or, for that matter, our capacity for discontent. The first part of this book begins with the proposition that we have reached a pivotal moment in our social development. Consumer capitalism, for all its abundance and its apparent dynamism, can no longer be relied upon to deliver human progress.

The limits of consumer capitalism

Ever since its emergence as a dominant industrial force, consumer capitalism has had its critics. Despite many attempts to forecast the system’s demise,2 capitalism has proved to be extraordinarily adaptable.3 Its persistence – alongside the collapse of alternatives – gives the system an air of permanence. Economies may wax and wane, but there is little sign that government-backed consumer capitalism is on the verge of collapse.

What we face in the twenty-first century is less a question of consumer capitalism’s viability than its purpose. In an age of abundance, is the system still capable of fostering human development? The question is timely because we can observe a new set of conditions that suggest the system’s ability to improve our lot is diminishing. These problems are sometimes difficult to appreciate because they are a product of the system’s success.

Consumer capitalism’s capacity for proliferation – to turn nature into dazzling aisles of consumable goods – is both its genius and, perhaps, its undoing. Its inexorable rise depends upon its ability to stimulate the production and consumption of objects without paying heed to matters of degree. Our supermarkets, big box stores and Amazonian web-aisles are testimony to the magnitude of the system’s productivity. But the benefits of proliferation are finite.

In the 1970s – a decade associated with rising working-class prosperity in developed countries – Jeremy Seabrook documented the attitudes of older working-class people in Britain. He found, even then, both a dependence upon and an underlying disillusionment with consumerism.4 The optimism of the postwar years had given way to a feeling of limited horizons. As one man told him: ‘The only chance of satisfaction we can imagine is getting more of what we’ve got now’,5 a sentiment that captures the absence of imagination at the heart of consumer capitalism. It is a system that can never envisage a moment when we have enough things.

The rise and fall of orthodoxies litter human history, and yet our collective imagination pins us firmly to the present. We behave and plan only for more of the same. There is no space, in this model, for a post-capitalist society,6 a place where the superfluity of consumer goods allows us to direct our energies away from the consumption of commodities towards other – potentially more purposeful – activities.

The material limits of a consumer capitalist vision force it into an encounter with the limits of the physical world. The idea of infinite economic growth was always going to fit awkwardly with the finite nature of life on earth. The first part of this book deals with the economic, social and environmental implications of this tension.

The economics of excess in a finite world

The economic recession towards the end of the twenty-first century’s first decade was an example of consumer capitalism’s tendency to over-reach in an attempt to create prosperity. The constant need for growth pushed us towards a reliance on mounting levels of debt in order to stimulate further the cycle of production and consumption.7 The system survived because of the largesse of governments who chose to use large amounts of public money to bail it out. This, of course, increased public debt and – ironically enough – increased our dependence on consumer capitalism to fill the gaps left by a more austere public sector.

The ‘credit crunch’ might have been avoided by a more sceptical attitude towards unfettered financial markets and more prudent government regulation. It is, however, symptomatic of the problems faced by a system that requires constant increases in demand to sustain economic growth. Superfluity becomes a necessity rather than an achievement, a contradiction that becomes ever more burdensome for the increasingly bemused consumer.

In the twentieth century governments were forced to grapple with capitalism’s tendency to drift towards monopoly.8 As companies grew, buying up competitors in waves of horizontal and vertical integration, they were able to make economies of scale and control distribution and publicity channels, driving out smaller competitors. They could then define the realm of choice to their own advantage, using their market power to drive out competition. While this remains a major problem (if we are concerned about the quality as well as the quantity of choice) – most of the world’s music, for example, is produced by one of three global companies9 – it can be dealt with by anti-monopoly legislation.10 The state has thereby intervened (albeit rather feebly in recent years) to protect consumer choice – without which the system loses its dynamism and purpose.

But the economics of excess have created another paradox, one that pushes the idea of a ‘rational consumer’ to breaking point. While some might balk at Ben Fine’s description of ‘rational economic man’ as combining ‘the basest instincts of a selfish beast with the highest form of commercial calculation’,11 its twenty-first century articulation presents us with a problem. This combination of self-interest (or, in more altruistic societies, ethical concerns) and careful calculation pushes us to buy the best (or most ethically produced) product at the best or fairest price. Rational consumers provide consumer capitalism with its central logic.12 En masse, or in well-heeled niches, they create a kind of market meritocracy, a place where quality will thrive.

In the developed world rational consumers now find themselves faced with two irreconcilable pressures. The sheer scale of goods available makes choosing what to buy both time-consuming and difficult. There are far more commodities available than there were fifty years ago, but no more leisure time in which to make decisions. We can either devote all our free time to making well-informed purchases, or conclude that this is a poor use of a precious resource (our free time) and give up trying – hoping, instead, that we might be steered by various unreliable prompts.13 Choice – once a way to assert our independence – becomes an encroachment on the time we have available to act independently.

The unlimited increase in consumer goods (on which the system depends) thus comes crashing up against the finite nature of our time on earth. The rational consumer begins – metaphorically at least – to fall apart. At the same time the value of commodities in an age of superabundance becomes increasingly difficult to maintain, as the empirical impact of each new object on our quality of life lessens with every purchase.

Consumer capitalism and the meaning of life

The social constraints consumer capitalism now faces are no less profound. The system’s appeal has always rested on a straightforward deal: capitalism creates wealth, and wealth makes us happier, healthier, more secure and fulfilled. Since the ability of a society to provide healthcare, education and enhance people’s quality of life depends upon resources, consumer capitalism’s productive flair has been embraced by a broad cross section of political opinion. It could fuel personal wealth and public services.

For classical economics, this deal is set in perpetuity. Increasing consumption and the desire for a better quality of life are locked in a permanent embrace. Yet this is also beginning to unravel. A growing body of research suggests that the relationship between a country’s gross domestic product and the quality of life of its citizens has a clear and visible end-point. Once a society reaches a certain level of affluence, the evidence suggests, economic growth ceases to have an impact on our physical or mental health.

In the twenty-first century, most developed countries have already passed this point. The push for economic growth is seen as necessary to sustain employment levels, but growth, in itself, no longer delivers clear social benefits. The consumer society’s persistent claims to make us happier, healthier and more fulfilled reverberates around the echo-chamber of advertising with an increasingly hollow ring.

Once the relationship between consumer capitalism and quality of life begins to drift apart, the system loses its most compelling rationale. Indeed, for the growing field of quality of life research, consumerism is seen as an increasingly malign influence, a compulsion that pushes us away from those non-material activities that are important sources of pleasure and meaning.

This is not to say that we do not find pleasure and value in objects, or to deny the advantages brought by the growth in affluence of consumer societies.14 The provision of comfort surrounded by a diversity of goods has all kinds of material and symbolic benefits.15 But these benefits are finite: our capacity to enjoy consumer goods is limited by time and space. We have now reached a stage where the continual proliferation of consumer goods risks cluttering up rather than adding to the meaning of life.

Consumer capitalism as a threat to our quality of life

The third strike against consumer capitalism today is perhaps the best known. The environmental limitations of our twenty-first-century world – the finite nature of the earth’s resources and its delicate ecology – are easy to grasp and well documented. In some ways, these limitations are less immediate than economic and social constraints. The system’s genius for transformation makes it possible to imagine doing more with less – recycling and reusing materials with increasing efficiency, for example – to enable economic growth for centuries to come.

The more immediate environmental problems created by consumer capitalism lie in that domain that economists refer to as ‘externalities’. The business of transforming raw materials into commodities, of distributing, selling and ditching them, has a myriad of environmental consequences. As the scale of our productive capacity grows, our ability to damage and destroy eco-systems grows with it. While we may be prompted to deal with the more conspicuous and manageable of these ‘externalities’ (reducing various forms of urban pollution in the developed world, for example) we tend to neglect those with less immediate effects upon affluent societies.

The most alarming of these is the way in which our fossil fuel driven economy is altering the earth’s ecology, creating a layer of greenhouse gases that will warm the planet with consequences for life on earth. The Stern Review on the economic consequences of climate change referred to ‘the greatest market failure the world has ever seen’.16 It is possible to imagine consumer capitalism running on clean energy, but the time-lag between cause and effect provides little incentive for either business or democratic governments to do what is required.

When the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) published their first comprehensive report in 1990, they described the devastating consequences if we failed to curtail global warming. But these dangers were not immediate: the accumulating impact of greenhouse gases lingers long after their production. The time span of the 1990 report – looking fifty to a hundred years ahead – gave licence for governments to prevaricate.

This, in part, explains our singular failure to address the problem. Since 1990, far from changing course, we have allowed greenhouse emissions to rise significantly, with mounting evidence of risks which draw ever closer. Even when economists described the purely fiscal costs of climate change,17 the response from business and government was, at best, half-hearted. We are now approaching (or, indeed, may have passed) the point at which we will be able prevent significant climate change or prepare for the subsequent disruption.

In this unhappy scenario, consumer capitalism’s drive towards further economic growth pushes the decades of reckoning ever nearer. As a system, it is unresponsive to longer term threats, which might lead it to switch to more expensive but cleaner forms of energy. It is also uniquely intolerant of one of the solutions, which would involve less dependence on the proliferation of consumer goods and economic growth. This is a scorched earth policy in more than a metaphorical sense. Consumer capitalism, in its current form, represents a threat to the collective security and well-being of the developed world.

Why is it so difficult to imagine other forms of progress?

Despite its economic, social and environmental shortcomings, consumer capitalism continues to dominate our field of vision. I write at a time when those on the political right urge public austerity and faith in the market’s ability to bounce back, while the left calls for more public spending to stimulate growth in the consumer economy. They share the desire for business as usual, differing only on how best to achieve it.

Neither proposal addresses the model’s economic limits, its failure to improve the quality of life or its push towards alarming environmental outcomes. In the developed world, consumer capitalism offers solutions to problems – lack of money for a good life, lack of consumer choice18 – that are, in affluent societies, increasingly irrelevant.19 And both sides have, thus far, failed to grasp the profundity of the system’s limits.

There is, of course, dissent. Consumer activism20 now exists side by side with anti-consumerism. Kim Humphery has observed that much of this anti-consumerism is tilted at individuals rather than societies, and is based on moral disapproval rather than more systemic issues,21 while Jo Littler has shown how ‘radical consumerism’ and the traditional variety can be two sides of the same coin.22 There is, nonetheless, an increasing sense of disillusionment with the consumerist project. The Occupy Movement, for example, has expressed both frustration and dissatisfaction with business as usual.23 It has been criticized for its incoherence and inability to articulate clear alternatives, but this is less a fault of the protesters than the orthodoxy they seek to question. Consumer capitalism appears to have created a cultural system that makes it difficult to conceive other models of human progress. Its economic, social and environmental limitations are sustained by a lack of imagination. The rest of this book looks at some of the reasons why this is so.

Media and the limits of imagination

The Disney corporation, one of the world’s largest media companies, has promoted the idea of the ‘imagineer’ – people who engineer imaginative landscapes.24 We have created a culture in which our society’s principal imagineers – the greatest concentration of creative talent and energy – work in the advertising industry. Part II looks at the ways this industry permeates almost every aspect of our cultural lives and considers the consequences of this relentless intrusion.

The sheer volume of creative time, effort and resources that we devote to advertising has allowed it, as a cultural form, to stretch its own boundaries. Advertising has become much more than just a sales pitch; it can be funny, moving, ingenious and engaging. But for all its wit and skill, it operates under the constraints of the consumerist system that depends upon it. Every story told by advertising rests upon an increasingly untenable proposition: that our quality of life is bound up in the purchase of commodities.

Advertisements may, individually, touch upon many aspects of human experience. Collectively, they repeat the idea that the only source of pleasure, popularity, status, security and meaning is in what Sut Jhally calls ‘the dead world of things’.25 They insist that the social world – the source of so much of what we value – is simply an extension of the world of commodities. Even if we ignore or reject most of the advertisements we see or hear (indeed, the ubiquity of advertising means that we must), it is difficult to remain untouched by this volume of repetition.

Advertising, in this sense, pretends to be outside politics, but it is deeply embedded in a series of highly contested ideas. If Part I explores the extent to which consumerism is a partisan, limited and increasingly problematic world view, Part II shows how advertising both sustains and expresses this view – not as some coordinated or conscious effort, but simply in the way it goes about its business.

Part III considers a cultural form that, in some ways, begins from a very different philosophical premise. Journalism is strongly tied to a democratic tradition, to the idea that for democracy to flourish people must be well informed. If advertising circulates conventional wisdom, journalism prides itself on questioning it.

Journalism is thereby well positioned to interrogate consumer capitalism’s shortcomings, to report alternative views and make what was once accepted controversial. But it remains constrained by its embrace with commerce. The tawdrier aspects of this embrace – the many ways in which commercialism leads us to redefine public interest as private intrigue rather than civic concern – are well documented. Part III explores a more fundamental constraint: the way in which our understanding of news has been shaped by a business model of news and information.

When journalism became a business, news became a commodity – one that came to be defined by its most profitable form. The democratic value of news is based on the longevity and value of the information it provides. The commercial value of news, by contrast, is based on its impermanence. A newspaper’s profitability depends on the idea that news is a flimsy, fragile form of information with a short shelf life, that being informed depends not on the quality of information but on its quantity and regularity.

The rise of a commercial news industry meant that news became defined in part by the notion of built-in obsolescence. The newspaper became the apotheosis of a disposable commodity. Yesterday’s news was, by definition, of little value, and news became increasingly bound up with the idea that what mattered above all was the immediate, the current, the here and now. The commercial stress on immediacy pushes journalism away from asking larger, more profound social and economic questions.

This manifests itself in the coverage given to economics and, more specifically, economic growth. The economic, social and environmental problems of our current growth model outlined in Part I are, in theory, grist to the journalistic mill. They pose serious challenges to the purveyors of conventional wisdom. News is precisely the kind of civic space in which these challenges might be aired – instead, we find little questioning of the idea that economic growth is always both desirable and necessary. It is not simply treated as uncontroversial, but as an objective good.

It is hardly surprising, in this context, that most news outlets failed to anticipate the banking crisis. The commodity form of news made investigation of structural economic problems difficult. What needs to be reclaimed and rethought is the democratic purpose of news, a space where our imaginations might flourish, and where we might be able to begin a more profound examination of the limits of consumer capitalism.

Part IV begins by stepping back to look at the communications and creative industries as a whole. While this is an important economic sector in its own right – more than 7% of global GDP – these are industries whose significance surpasses their economic value. They produce commodities that dominate our leisure time and, indeed, our consciousness.

The information and creative industries are dominated by large global conglomerates.26 Concerns about protecting cultural diversity and the quality of content in its less profitable forms have been played out in the politics of trade agreements (battles over the right to subsidize local production so that it can survive the onslaught of Hollywood, for example) and monopoly legislation. What has received less attention is the way in which increasing dependence on a particular business model shapes our conception of technological progress.

The media and telecommunications industries have always been adept at planned obsolescence: the shift from vinyl to CD, for example, was pushed by integrated conglomerates in order to create new markets for old content and sell new hardware.27 But the digital age has meant that cultural forms – like music, films, computer software and games – are no longer so obviously bound to physical objects that can be bought and sold.28 This has pushed the industry towards business models increasingly dependent on upgrading the digital devices that allow us to play with, watch, listen to or use cultural forms.

The industry’s pursuit of this new business model has been a spectacular success. And there have, along the way, been genuine innovations in technology and design. It has also been an environmental disaster, shortening the shelf-life of electronic devices – most of which are discarded in full working order – to create mountains of toxic electronic waste amid a frenzy of production, consumption and replacement.

It has also created a culture in which we associate progress with consumption. Progress is bound up less with creating innovative, diverse and well-crafted cultural forms than with the speed at which we dump and replace digital devices. The industry thus not only embraces consumer capitalism, it epitomizes it. Its business model has become a philosophy, a way of life. As long as we are swept along in this constant cycle of replacement it is difficult to imagine other forms of progress, to see how innovation might serve a social and cultural purpose as well as a commercial imperative.

Part IV ends by trying to envisage other ways of moving forward. The final chapter sketches out proposals for opening up the space in which we can conceive new ways of organizing the future. Consumer capitalism may well play a role in that future, but not at the expense of more promising and more sophisticated visions of human development.

Part I

Stretching beyond its limits: The tired machinery of consumer capitalism

2

Consumer capitalism as a cul-de-sac

Consumer capitalism dominates our economic, social and cultural life. Its omnipresence in the developed world has, in part, depended upon the actions of governments to moderate its excesses and harness its profits for public good. In the twenty-first century this understanding appears to have withered, and consumer capitalism frames many of our assumptions.

The notion of a consumer culture now pervades most aspects of private and public life. There is, however, an increasing tension between a consumer culture based on permanent growth in production and the finite nature of our physical, social and psychological landscape.

Consumer capitalism as a way of life

An economic system may simply be a way of organizing the production and distribution of resources, but there is nothing innocent or incidental about these arrangements. Any system of production and consumption imposes its own range of possibilities. Economics can inspire wars and revolutions, it is at the heart of most political struggles, and, perhaps most fundamentally, it can play a central role in our understanding of what constitutes a good life. The way we shape our economy will, in turn, shape us. 1

We are more than mere cogs in a money-making machine, witlessly obeying its commands. There are many aspects of life whose relationship to our economic system is indirect and diffuse: our relationships with our family and friends may take place in an economic context, but those relationships have a volition that transcends economics. Nonetheless, our goals, values and opportunities are inevitably influenced by consumer capitalism – from the media we consume to the food we eat. Consumer capitalism may not encompass everything we do, but it does, in part, define us as a society. 2

This point is always easier to grasp when we are looking at systems foreign to our own. Economics is, in this sense, a little like language. Other ways of speaking are distinct and identifiable, whereas the way we speak ourselves seems natural, a point of departure for every other accent or dialect. Consumer capitalism is often discussed as if it evolved as a natural and necessary consequence of human activity in a productive, democratic age. And yet anthropology teaches us that life in contemporary consumer economies is both contrived and distinct. 3

Accordingly, when we talk about ‘capitalism’ we are usually implying more than a set of financial arrangements. Consumer capitalism evokes a culture and a lifestyle. We refer, after all, to ‘capitalist societies’ as often as we refer to ‘capitalist economies’ 4 – the assumption being that capitalism is a social as well as an economic system. 5

It is worth pausing here to reflect that, despite its ubiquity, most of us no longer use the word ‘capitalism’ as often as we might. Since the collapse of Soviet-style communism and the integration of China as a key player in a global capitalist economy (whatever it may call itself), there has been no obvious counterpoint to give meaning to the word. The battle between capitalism and communism defined politics for much of the twentieth century. In the twenty-first, consumer capitalism no longer has a visible alter-ego. Our principal point of comparison has disappeared.

In theory, the collapse of the Soviet model liberated us from a narrow dichotomy, where critical thinking about capitalism would inevitably be reduced to positions somewhere on the continuum between communism and free market liberalism.6 In practice, it created an intellectual dead-end, whereby capitalism’s victory was seen as the final product of an evolutionary process, an idea encapsulated in Francis Fukuyama’s well-known tract, The End of History.7 In this vision, capitalist democracies represent an endpoint in human progress, their success a guarantor of the system’s superiority. Without a point of comparison, capitalism (or various versions of it) assumed an air of inevitability, stunting our ability to appreciate its flaws and imagine alternatives.

Consumer capitalism’s place in our institutions, our social life and our consciousness seems assured, and yet its capacity to enrich our lives appears to be draining away. Thereby lies a central theme of this book: human progress, especially at this moment in our history, relies less on an acceptance and more on our interrogation of consumer capitalism.

The rise, falter and rise of consumer capitalism

It is easy to anthropomorphize consumer capitalism. In 1955, a retail analyst called Victor Liebow wrote – with remarkable prescience and candour – that:

Our enormously productive economy … demands that we make consumption our way of life, that we convert the buying and the selling of goods into rituals, that we seek our spiritual satisfaction, our ego satisfaction in commodities. 8

This epiphany gives consumer capitalism a commanding voice: we may have created it but, like Doctor Frankenstein’s brilliant creation, it refuses to do our bidding. Rather than serving our interests, it is ‘our enormously productive economy’ that makes demands. It tells us – like a deity or a dictator – how we should best serve its interests. Its rapacious wants become our needs.

Liebow’s gospel is deeply pessimistic, robbing us of our independence. His use of anthropomorphic metaphors is not unusual (indeed, the observant reader will have noticed that I have already succumbed to this temptation). For its devotees, capitalism is an ingenious and dynamic creature, magical yet rational, one which – like a benign will-o’-the-wisp – will deliver the greatest good to the greatest number.9 For its critics capitalism can be a merciless despot, a creature red in tooth and claw which, left to its own devices, becomes bloated, corrupt and, in extremis, brutal.

The problem with both descriptions is that whether we see capitalism as clever or cruel, it has no ingenuity, no wit, no morality, no feeling and no understanding. It is a collection of financial forces and mechanisms which have, at times, been both efficient and productive. But, while the system has a genius for reinventing itself, its capacity is limited and, like many of its products, it comes fraught with imperfections.

If we ask consumer capitalism to create an information system enabling citizens to understand the world, its best efforts continue to fall well short of our ideals. So, for example, even our wealthiest market system – that in the United States – has been unable to create a news service to rival the breadth and scope of the publicly funded, non-commercial BBC. 10

For all its adaptability, capitalism fits awkwardly with many contemporary social or political desires. The rise of democracy saw a clamour of politicians, preachers, poets and protest movements speaking out against unfettered capitalism, a system they saw as oblivious to a whole range of human needs. They resolved that we use other means – whether political, legal or cultural – to craft our own destiny, rather than allow history to be guided by the ethereal force of the ‘invisible hand’. Their combined will was too insistent to be ignored: some societies tried to bypass capitalism altogether, but most set about restricting and adapting it in the name of the common good.

As a consequence, the twentieth century was characterized as much by the contestation of capitalism as by its promulgation. We saw a raft of regulations to change or modify some of its systemic features (often referred to as ‘market failures’).11 Capitalism’s flair for wealth creation had a series of unintended consequences – what economists call ‘externalities’. It is a technical term that, like the military euphemism ‘collateral damage’, covers a multitude of ills. It was a Conservative British prime minister in the 1970s who spoke of the ‘unacceptable face of capitalism’,12 and whose government was content to preside over the rise of a less avaricious public sector, one more responsive to social goals and created to provide on the basis of need rather than ability to pay.

On the home front, the ‘self-correcting’ nature of capitalism – the idea that when companies or financial institutions crashed and burned, new business would rise from the ashes – was regarded as unacceptably cruel.13 The gap between failure and rebirth took little account of the human misery caused by the upheaval. Governments – especially those in the wealthier, developed world – began to intervene in the marketplace to stimulate economic growth and to limit the damage (in their own countries, at least) when things went awry.

The rise of democracy created a demand for careful planning and equality of opportunity – something that, in many realms of life, was delivered more successfully by public rather than private institutions. Despite capitalism’s energy, some of the twentieth century’s greatest achievements – in healthcare, culture, architecture, education, science and technology – came from public investment rather than private capital. Without public money and political will there would have been no space exploration, no universal healthcare or education systems and no world wide web.

Even in countries like the United States, economic growth was often driven by public investment, regulation and subsidy. 14 Wealthier, developed countries regulated the market to protect various public interests, while creating other economic models for key areas like education, environmental protection, transport, health and law and order. Cruder forms of capitalist development – where ruthless human and environmental exploitation increased levels of profit – were consigned to the poorer part of the world, which, in many cases, did not thrive as a consequence.

Some of the most progressive societies to emerge from a century of hard and soft conflict were Scandinavian social democracies – where capitalist forces were muted or displaced by a set of egalitarian principles. These societies, surveys suggest, are some of the world’s most equal and content,15 places where the public good took precedence over private gain.

But capitalism endured. Towards the end of the twentieth century the idealism behind public institutions became tainted by the petty failings of bureaucracy and the cumbersome anonymity of large government institutions. These failures inspired the rise of a neo-liberalist politics – epitomized most famously by Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan – based on a reassertion of the primacy and efficiency of private markets (albeit fuelled and protected, in part, by public spending). Citizens were routinely recast as ‘consumers’, whose engagement in the world was limited to preferences in the marketplace. 16

Although consumer activism – boycotting companies or goods – has sometimes managed to persuade consumers to act collectively, this cuts against the grain of consumerism, which – unlike citizenship – is based on a philosophy of individual preferences. 17 Hence Margaret Thatcher’s famous dismissal of the idea of society and the primacy of ‘individuals and families’. As she put it in an interview with Woman’s Own magazine: ‘Who is society? There is no such thing! There are individual men and women and there are families … There is no such thing as society.’ 18

One of the ironies of recent history is that as consumerism has expanded the power of consumers has shrunk. As corporations displaying their wares were allowed to grow (enhancing their political clout), the ability of individual consumers to assert their will became, by degrees, ever more feeble. If people decide to boycott their independent local shop, it might – if they make enough noise about it – cause the shopkeeper some concern. If they boycott a national chain of supermarkets because of their poor environmental record, their individual action is far too minuscule to register an impact. Or if they have a preference for a certain product – fruit buns made with wholemeal rather than white flour, to pick a random example – the market, oblivious to individual tastes, will not necessarily provide it.

In mass or even niche markets, preferences are only meaningful if they are widely shared: consumer capitalism has no interest in individuality in its distinct or original sense. The more consumer capitalism pushes towards large units of mass production and consumption, the less sympathetic it is to diversity or idiosyncrasy. For all the rhetoric about individual freedom made by some of its protagonists, consumer capitalism has become a deeply collectivist enterprise. The power of industry lies in its ability to override what distinguishes us as individuals and appeal to – or construct – commonality (otherwise known as ‘markets’, as in the ‘youth market’). While big government is often blamed for creating a disillusioned and alienated electorate, big businesses create a similar feeling of powerlessness. 19

The role of government, in the new neo-liberal orthodoxy from the 1980s onward, was not to modify capitalism but to manage it. Soviet leader Michael Gorbachev’s hope that he might move Russia towards a Scandinavian model of social democracy was dashed by a corrupt capitalist land-grab. China, meanwhile, became a totalitarian capitalist state in all but name. The world’s dominant institutions (a mix of governments and global corporations),20 backed by bodies like the World Trade Organization, worked to ensure that the globalization was organized around the freedom to move money and goods (and to a much lesser extent, people) around the globe.

So it was that, more than five hundred years to the good, capitalism entered the twenty-first century in remarkably rude health. At the heart of this success lie two inextricably linked ideas. The first – one that Victor Liebow anticipated so well – is an image of the good life based on the accumulation of products. Consumerism, almost by definition, sells itself, but its main selling point is its ability to improve our quality of life.

The second is the idea of perpetual economic growth, a notion that has become a central focus of our political life. The economist Tim Jackson stresses how distinct this is to the modern age:

For the last five decades the pursuit of growth has been the single most important policy goal across the world. The global economy is almost five times the size it was half a century ago. If it continues to grow at the same rate the economy will be 80 times that size by the year 2100. This extraordinary ramping up of global economic activity has no historical precedent. 21

Both these ideas – consumerism and the importance of growth – involve a celebration of excess, where more is always good and where the role of the market is to supply this superabundance. Today, few governments question these two ideas – even if they were inclined to – and many try hard to exemplify them.

The early period of the global recession towards the end of the first decade of the twenty-first century was an interesting historical moment, one that revealed both the fragility and the strength of the prevailing orthodoxy. A tiny window opened, offering us a glimpse of what it might be like to rethink one of the dominant ideologies of our age. In a metaphorical nanosecond – one that seemed to slip away almost as it appeared – the enormity of the ‘credit crunch’ seemed as if it might have the potential to bring the whole edifice of an over-reaching capitalist system crashing down.

For the more open-minded members of the commentariat, the air was suddenly thick with contradiction. Big capitalism – from banks to car-makers – insisted on the right to be bailed out by the welfare state. The breezy confidence behind the lend and spend world of twenty-first-century consumer capitalism fell way like the emperor’s new clothes. Our system of rewards, so generous to those in the pure business of money making, looked at best misplaced and at worst obscene – especially when ordinary tax-payers were required to give the speculators a lavishly cushioned landing. Even right-leaning newspapers – who tend to be pro-business and anti-regulation – joined the chorus of disapproval.

For some economists, the credit crunch was all too predictable. 22 A heady mix of unregulated financial markets and increasingly debt-dependent growth, they warned, was always likely to end in tears. In an effort to sustain unsustainable levels of growth, the financial sector was encouraged to take risks with credit and devise ingenious forms of speculative investment. The successful financier George Soros describes how governments and financial authorities, in an effort to fuel demand and stimulate continued economic growth, allowed the creation of a ‘super-bubble’ in the money markets.23 Governments, for their part, were beguiled by the confidence of the financial sector, which seemed to promise the growth they craved.

Despite the rhetoric of open markets, big business has long been adept at exploiting various forms of state subsidy, but the rescue packages they sought when the system collapsed were on an unprecedented scale. Risks that had been taken for private gain were paid for by public money. To the political and business consensus – who paid little attention to those outside their own circle who might have warned them – it was a punch in the solar plexus.

Suddenly, it seemed as if we might have the conditions in place for a radical, popular challenge, not just to the neo-liberal orthodoxy but to consumer capitalism as a model for human progress. The idea that Western capitalism was the end point of human history,24 looked decidedly myopic as the fragility of its internecine and speculative structures were laid bare. This was, perhaps, the beginning of the end of the end of history.

But the broader challenge never materialized. On the contrary, while most of the conditions that precipitated the recession remain, we have lurched back into pre-recessionary ways with remarkable speed. Financial markets remain lightly regulated (a little less lightly in places, but still relatively unrestrained), bankers bonuses are back, the threat of climate change is ignored in the quest for relentless economic growth, and we are urged, once again, to take on debt and carry on consuming (even though, for many, living standards remain stagnant). The price of consumer capitalism’s failure led not to the growth of a more stable public sector but to its retrenchment, leaving us even more dependent on private capital and investment.

The entrenchment of a consumer culture

Celia Lury lists the ways in which we now embrace consumer culture.25 We have seen an extraordinary proliferation of commodities – between the 1970s and 1990s the USA saw a tenfold increase in the number of new goods to hit the market. 26 An array of market reforms have been introduced across the public domain, from welfare to warfare.27 Shopping is both a leisure pursuit and a focus of material and online public space (in the USA, only TV viewing takes up more leisure time). We have seen a voluminous growth in the size of retail space (in the USA, a fourfold expansion in the last 30 years).28 And we have become accustomed to the promotion of consumer debt, the rise of brands and the ubiquity of advertising.

Research from across the humanities and social sciences has tried to take stock of consumer culture, and there is a healthy literature documenting its rise.29 This work is full of insight about the way we live now, and deserves far more attention than it receives. There is, nonetheless, a tension between some of the more robust critics of consumerism and those who are uncomfortable with dismissing the many ordinary benefits associated with it. Roberta Sassatelli30 and Daniel Miller31 both argue against what they see as the disapproving moral tone of some of the anti-consumerist literature. The pleasures and perks of consumer capitalism are so much a part of everyday life, Miller suggests, that few of the system’s most eloquent critics are prepared to forgo them. They stress the need to acknowledge that the availability of a wide selection of goods has important symbolic as well as material benefits.

It is not surprising if debates about the nature of consumer capitalism have a moral inflection and often drift towards absolutes, in which the machinery of market economics is portrayed as either benign or malignant. For centuries now these debates have been cast in ethical and political terms, played out across the statistics and spreadsheets of the social sciences and the narratives of the humanities. During the twentieth century our view of the ethics and efficacies of consumer capitalism defined our position on a political continuum.

In this book, I have chosen to sidestep these mighty and enduring arguments to address a new set of problems that beset consumer capitalism in an age of abundance. These are matters of proportion rather than principle, in which the never-ending cycles of production and consumption come up against the increasingly cramped time and space of the human condition. They apply whether we laud consumer capitalism as the most effective form of wealth creation or lament its inequities. They do not add up to an argument for abandoning consumer capitalism, but they do suggest its displacement as our principal modus operandi.