Book Review: _Consumed_

Post-Industrial Capitalism and Resistance to the Loss of Public Space

Kenneth W. Estling

Benjamin R. Barber, Consumed: How Markets Corrupt Children, Infantilize Adults, and Swallow Citizens Whole (New York, NY: WW Norton and Company, 2007), 381 pages, paper, $16.95.

 In Consumed: How Markets Corrupt Children, Infantilize Adults, and Swallow Citizens Whole, Benjamin Barber describes the various ways in which consumer capitalism in the developed, post-industrial democracies turns public spaces and the responsibilities of citizenship into nothing more than a loose aggregate of manufactured needs, brand identities, and purely private market preferences.  He  continues his analysis with a critique of resistance efforts, many of which are not resistance per se but rather alternate versions of commodification.  However ironic, subversive, or anti-authoritarian the message of resistance movements, they too easily become objects for sale, consumer non-durables in a world where 'callous cash payment' replaces all that is holy- Radical Studies, Che Guevera t-shirts, Freegans, Comedy Central, Chomsky CD's, and 'Going Green' become profitable market niches, thus feeding the machinations of the imperial monster rather than cutting off its food supply. 

  In this sense, Barber's findings are not novel: those on the political Left have long lamented the annihilation of public space and the reduction of men and women into one-dimensional beings cut off  from one another and themselves, so confused about the source of their and the world's problems that resistance seems impossible, replaced instead by ugly, other worldly fundamentalisms and cultural and racial xenophobias while politics itself becomes the enemy rather than a possible solution.  That quaint old word—alienation—comes to mind.  As do the writings of Herbert Marcuse, Karl Polanyi, and Joan Robinson, who once famously quipped that “the purpose of studying economics is not to acquire a set of ready made answers to economic questions, but to learn how to avoid being deceived by economists.”  Reading Consumed, one gets the sense that Barber would agree with Robinson. 

Seen from the long view, the accumulation dynamics of capitalism—and the dialectic of that history—appears less dialectical and more like the flexing of pure, unadulterated power: when capital is not too busy waging world wars of inter-imperialist economic and political rivalry, it spends its downtime dishing out corporate and State propaganda, over-sexualizing children, turning adults into hyper-consuming adolescents unable to distinguish between needs and wants, and transforming politics and values into competing brands between the various private property wings of nominally multi-party States, in the end selling itself, via sex and subtle appeals to unspoken anxieties and fears, to those whom it exploits.  And the ideology purchased by the exploited has one over-arching message: markets are the sole representative, protector, and guarantor of universal human rights, individual liberties, and unfettered choice.  

All of the above was true a half century ago and remains true today, though much more obviously so now, as the productivist version of capitalism that dominated the post-WWII period has given way to the “hot money” of Stiglitz and financial cannibalization rather than to the creation of new material wealth that could be used to raise globally standards of living.  The connection that Adam Smith once praised—satisfying real human needs while reaping profits that could further finance the satisfaction of human need—has given way to satisfying the debt-financed imaginary needs of those fortunate enough to be born in the northern hemisphere in countries dominated by finance capital, the corporate business press, and multi-national conglomerates with one allegiance—the profit motive itself, regardless of unmet, truly human needs.

What is novel, however, is Barber's presentation.  He weaves a moving narrative out of anecdote, fact, observation, powerful wit, and an equally powerful writing style.  Barber floats effortlessly between comparative economics, psychology, classical political-economy, the hypnotics and ubiquity of mass advertising, religious history, utilitarian versus deontological ethics, the history of colonialism and imperialism, the privatization of education at all levels, bioengineering, cloning and genetic research, fashion trends and narcissism, the ideological biases of neoliberalism and the Washington Consensus, and globalization as a fully realized global phenomenon.  Take this passage, from an early chapter on Protestantism and Puerility: 

 Weber imagined a capitalist world in which the cash nexus triumphed over investment, anticipating that late capitalism's managerial                                 overseers were likely to be more interested in liquidating than creating and investing capital and more concerned to sell unneeded goods to those who could afford them than to produce needed goods for those without the means to purchase them.  Hence he envisioned a world where capitalists were transformed into “specialists without spirit, sensualists without heart,” women and men singing their own praises yet constituting in truth “this nullity” which “imagines that it has attained a level of civilization never before achieved.” 

Not everyone who admires capitalism welcomes its decline into the nullity of compulsory consumerism or spiritualizes its coercive kiddie culture.  Nor does everyone who appreciates its capacity to create wealth imagine this is the same thing as creating happiness—let alone justice.  The somewhat hysterical self-promotion of the 1990s, which allowed investors to persuade themselves capitalism was once again riding a boom fueled by the new digital technology, has given way in some quarters to renewed pessimism.

Thus 'demand' means not human need intersecting with available supply while realizing optimal economic output consequent the divergent calculations of rational, self-interested agents seeking their own utility maximization; rather, demand is reduced to those with the money to purchase the goods capitalism has produced and marketed, with finance capital doing whatever it takes to realize and expand profits, even to the point of assuming the kinds of real estate and other financial risks not seen since the 1920's.  The pessimism Barber hints at has now become a chronic case of melancholy given stock returns and real estate related financial losses since the fall of 2007.  In one short year capitalist triumph has gone to capitalist despair—at the time of this writing over half of all Americans think that the U.S. is headed into an economic depression. 

From this criticism of the ethos of modern capitalism, Barber then analyzes what he calls the infantilization of adults and an all-encompassing consumerism—the phenomenon of grown men and women shopping non-stop and living as children, even while they have their own children, mortgages, and full-time jobs.  From there he discusses the privatization of citizenship and how private choices often conflict with public desires, such as the 'need' for hundreds of styles of personal cars existing in opposition to a widespread belief that public transportation would be more efficient and less costly to the environment.  Barber points out, correctly, that there is no contradiction in choosing to drive (often alone) a personal car while also desiring affordable, accessible, and efficient public transportation; rather, what it reveals is the fundamentally anti-democratic nature of markets in that privatization of public need involves a sort of 'reverse social contract' where civic duties and shared responsibilities are replaced by a totalizing trojan horse of 'rights' and 'individual choices' that seeks to cast abysmal public failures in housing, health, education, transportation, and infrastructure development as a consequence of poor individual choices rather than as an inherent failure of the liberal—and capitalist—State.

It is at this point that Consumed breaks down.  While surveying the loss of public space and civic schizophrenia, Barber analyzes various forms of resistance—culture jamming, anti-consumerism, counter-marketing, the revival of justice orientated religious movements, and culture creolization and carnivalization.  What he concludes is that capitalism must 'heal' itself by evolving into a more just and democratic version of itself.  Capitalism's profit motive must be attached to an ethic of corporate citizenship; citizens must use the State and local government to create monopolies, such as public television, that, in counter-intuitive ways, ensure diversity of programming with respect to political opinions, domestic and international news, and art; consumers must boycott those firms that destroy the environment and mistreat or abuse their workers; elected officials must protect their constituents from harmful products and seek to build a world not of war but of diplomacy; governments must recognize that although markets are very good at some things, at other things they grossly underperform publicly owned operations; and democratic forms—capitalist democracy—must become global and truly interdependent, a kind of 'capitalist international' among the world's various stakeholders, a sort of transnational citizenry of the rich and the forgotten, the middle class and the working poor, entertainers and the intelligentsia, and political elites and media moguls.  These stakeholders must seek not only more democracy internally but also more democracy internationally.  The problems of capitalist democracy, suggests Barber, are best solved by adding more democracy. 

  What is unspoken in this solution is whether the owners of capital desire such a solution or whether they would let such a solution—and its accompanying ideological justifications—emerge, take root, and reproduce itself.  This question is important because what Barber outlines amounts to nothing less than the euthanasia of the political, economic, and cultural power of the ruling class.  Given the history of capitalism, what seems far more likely than Barber's solution is either a further disciplining of workers and the middle class or, as a sort of external relief valve, the re-emergence of competing global hegemons and an increased likelihood of inter-imperialist warfare (buttressed by nationalism, jingoism, and propaganda) over new markets, cheaper labor power, and access to monopoly rents based in geography and scarce commodities.  This is obvious to the point of banality. 

Capitalism has faced crises before: the unemployment and excess capacity of the Great Depression was 'solved' not by the public expenditures of FDR, which did not revive the economy, but rather through global warfare, millions of deaths, and the world wide destruction of surplus capital and excess labor power.  The same could be said of the economic crises of 1907 and 1913, WWI, and the fight over natural resources in Africa and the Middle East.  Historians of the future may well view the U.S. invasion and occupation of Iraq in a similar vein.

It is troubling fact that the populations of Europe and the U.S. are unwilling (rightfully so) to give up generations of material, political, and social gains, while simultaneously Asia and the former colonies of the West seek entry themselves into global capitalism, with leaders here and elsewhere allowing economic struggles to degenerate into a politics of regress, myth, symbolism, patriotism, jingoism, and nationalism.  This global class struggle presents a number of risks, the most pressing being territorially based international conflicts to relieve domestic dissent and strife.  It is this 'solution' that Barber avoids discussing, despite its horrifying implications, and it is in this sense that Consumed fails its readers.