Zadok Paper S101 Winter 1999
The Abuse of Consumerism
by Dave Collis

Consumerism as Hyper-reality

I want to know explore the lack of narrative structure within the consumer story. More than a chance coincidence, however, the lack of narrativity within the consumer story is evidence of consumerism's abusive nature. Just as those enmeshed within abuse cannot tell a convincing story with any realistic narrative depth capable of standing up to critical evaluation, so too the story recited by consumerism is less than convincing.

I wish you could see this great mystery
Earth and Sun and Moon, human tribe, thin blue line
Earth and Sun and Moon will survive
Too messed up to care.[56] 

What is centrally hidden, or at least distorted, by consumerism is that which is most immediate to people-the material world. As the lyrics above attest, the 'mystery' of a healthy relationship with nature is hidden because consumers are 'too messed up to care'. On a broad ecological scale, the dominant consumer mentality is to treat nature as a resource to be controlled rather than an 'other' to be related to. A present day illustration of this mentality is the World Trade Organisation whose response to environmental destruction is to treat the issue in the language of resource management.[57]  No other dimension of relationship to nature is referred to in the dominant economic discourse of Western nations. This pathology is evidenced by the 'throw away' mentality which thrives under capitalism. Our blatant over consumption without replacement of the earth's resources testifies to the sickness of this relationship.

Criticisms of this pathological relationship have flourished in areas as traditional Western philosophy, ecofeminism and indigenous writings. Marx, for example, asserts that humans (specifically workers) are alienated from the material products they produce. By this he means that "the worker is related to the product of his labour as to an alien object,"[58]  and that the object eventually comes to stand in hostile relationship to him. Alienation arises, he argues, as a result of the productive processes of capitalism. The more the worker spends himself, Marx argues, "the more powerful becomes the alien world of objects which creates over and against himself, the poorer he himself-his inner world-becomes, the less belongs to him as his own . . . The worker puts his life into the object; but now his life no longer belongs to him but to the object . . . The alienation of the worker in his product means not only that his labour becomes an object, an external existence, but that it exists outside him, independently, as something alien to him, and that it becomes a power on its own confronting him."[59] 

This distorted relationship, Marx argues, is hidden from consciousness; capitalism "conceals the estrangement inherent" in the productive system.[60]  Although touching on the pathological relationship of humans to nature, by limiting alienation to the relationship between worker and product Marx fails to go far enough. Strongly present within his theories is the anthropocentric progressivist ideal of humans as the pinnacle and fulfilment of material creation.

Not only are humans privileged in terms of being the locus of meaning, they are also properly the masters and dominators of the material world. It is their capacity to transform and use the natural world, according to Marx, which constitutes their human essence.[61]  Robyn Eckersley describes this tendency within orthodox Marxism as "the progressive march of history, which had emphasised the liberatory potential of the increasing mastery of nature"[62]  which, in Engel's words, lifted humankind "from the kingdom of necessity to the kingdom of freedom".[63] 

But rather than being restricted to Marxists alone, the domination of nature is, rather, a characteristic of the whole of the Enlightenment project involving communism just as much as capitalism. Vine Deloria, a Native American philosopher, argues that it is precisely this anthropocentric domination of nature which constitutes the pathology of the Marxist no less than the Capitalist relationship to nature. "Marxism offers yet another group of cowboys riding around the same old rock. It is Western religion dressed up in economist clothing, and shabby clothing it is. It accepts uncritically and a-historically the world view generated by some ancient Western trauma that our species is alienated from nature and then offers but another version of Messianism."[64] 

What is problematic about anthropocentric views is the sense that humans are significantly constituted by and inseparable from the rest of nature. A domination of nature, whether under capitalism or communism, must therefore also be a domination of the human since the human is also part of nature.

Such domination has created a need for reconciliation with nature. Jurgen Habermas, paraphrasing Marcuse, describes the necessary shift in world view that would be required to effect such change: "Instead of treating nature as the object of possible technical control, we can encounter her as an opposing partner in a possible interaction."[65]  In linking this process to the consumer world Marcuse argued that any act of reconciliation on these terms will be a subversive act since it will constitute an implicit challenge to instrumental rationality[66]  (hence Marcuse's support for the aesthetic liberation of the senses within the counter culture).

It is important to note that the estrangement from nature spoken of here need not be limited to the natural environment found outside the human world. While the estrangement of people from their material world is a broad issue which most obviously affects our relationship with the non-human world, it also affects many attitudes and behaviours within human society.

To: Hiding production from the consumer

Dave Collis is project worker for Jubilee 2000 Campaign in Australia, and is involved with street ministries with the Urban Mission Unit of Collins Street Baptist Church and the St Vincent de Paul Society.