Why Ethical Consumerism Is a Trap

if there were ever a day that epitomizes

the excesses of capitalism

it would be F

deals upon deals pepper

Windows early morning crowds Rampage

through stores and multiple TVs

line carts as big box companies offload

all their endless production

into our Liv this be the biggest Black Friday

ever but for some

Black Friday represents a chance to push back

to consume ethically the patagonians

of the world urge us don't buy their jackets

and REI argues we should opt outside

while Ikea encourages Shoppers to buy and sell their used furniture

instead with the slogan green Friday

the message in this marketing is that you the consumer

can make a change at the checkout counter

you can make informed

choices by buying brands that actually care

you in turn can create environmental

and social transformation and show that you care

in the process but it's not so easy

indeed the ethical Purity Patagonia

REI and Ikea pursue by a shoeing

Black Friday might just be slight of hand

an illusion that hides the deeper workings of exploitation

and inherent destruction of capitalism

today we dive into the murky Waters of ethical consumerism

we'll waade into the midsts of B Corp certifications

the importance of commodity fetishism

as well as unpack

whether there is truly

no ethical consumption under

capitalism Amazon packages pile up on front door steps

storage units filled to the brim

sales commercials and influencers

shovel even more useless

stuff down our throats

consumption pervades every facet of our lives

and in the process we consume

far more than we need food waste is higher than ever

primary energy consumption has skyrocketed

since 1950 and Global waste continues

to rise unabated not to mention emissions rates push upward

year over year at a time when they need to be doing the exact

opposite but this is not simply the end result of human nature

it's not the conclusion

of our greed and moral depravity

no consumption is the enabler

of capitalism and we're forced to live with its waste

capitalism demands overc consumption

because consumption is the motor oil of capitalist

production and accumulation as I explained in this video

capitalists must constantly expand their productive

capacities through new technologies

decreasing labor costs and scaling

up to create the most commodities

for the lowest price prices

if they fail to do so

capitalists get eaten alive

by other more capable owners

who've managed to create more products at cheaper prices

and ultimately create more profit

this process of constant

accumulation and expansion creates increased

production production that generates

piles of Commodities which must be sold to the masses

to continue the cycle of capital

accumulation exchanging products for even more money

is essential to complete the last Lev leg of the money

invested into Commodities and sold for even more money

also known as the MCM

cycle in a sense consumption

can be seen as a release Val or lubricant

of production it expands

and contracts and enables

but never creates the flow of goods

enter ethical consumerism a movement of buyers who assume that the problem is the

quality and quantity of the Commodities

we buy we only need to choose better and buy less and capitalism's

environmental and social toll shrinks

at its core ethical consumerism

asks us to wield everyday shopping

to drive social change

it seeks to guide the tide of overproduction

towards the moral good

by embracing so-called ethical

brands in short voting with your dollar and companies have leaned

on this mindset with everything from allnatural

hemp fiber Patagonia pants claiming to save the Earth to 100%

recycled Coke bottles companies coat their products in nods towards saving the planet

it's Apple's very first carbon neutral product or ending exploitative

practices to get you to buy their stuff from the consumer

point of view under capitalism

and especially under neoliberal

capitalism wielding or purchasing

power for political purposes

makes sense for so long we've been inundated

with the narrative that consumers

have control that our choice at the checkout counter

matters if we can all just put our money where our mouth is and

buy the right stuff the market will respond

quickly and corporations will be forced to transform

their production into morally

sound and environmentally ethical entities

because no one will shop at their stores

if they refuse to change

this is the neoliberal

theory of consumer sovereignty

an idea that has now been championed

by liberals interested in working

within the system for change

this strain of politics

transforms the act of consumption

into a political activity

with catch races like vote with your fork or vote with your dollar but

the reality is far from the utopic

and simplistic vision of consumer sovereignty

ethical consumerism while meaning

well has done little to move the

needle the proliferation of stores like Whole Foods REI

everlane as well as Corporate social responsibility

makes it seem like ethical consumerism

is working there is no doubt that these companies are taking some important

actions Whole Foods has committed to reducing

its food waste and making its stores

more energy efficient while Tech Behemoth

Salesforce committed $1.5 million

to help end homelessness

in the Bay Area but are these just Illusions

are these just small

actions that help cover up more substantial

exploitation and the maintenance of the status quo

the short answer is

yes Whole Foods is owned and operated

by Amazon a company Long known for pushing both its workers

and the environment to the brink

not to mention that as Whole Foods has grown

it's been plagued with Revelations

about its exploitative supply chain like selling cheese May with prison labor

or more recently when migrant children in the United States were found

throughout whole foods' supply chain

helping to debone chicken sold at Whole Foods

meanwhile Salesforce say they can do well and you can do good at the

same time one day and then use that $1.5

million which is a minuscule

amount compared to their profits

for unhoused people to make an app

and then the very next day the company fires 1,000

of its employees without warning

in this light corporate A's

ethical Deeds should be seen not as progress towards a more ethical form of

capitalism but instead as a flimsy

protective shield that masks

corporations true ecological and human

exploitation these quote unquote

ethical Deeds are just the maintenance

of the status quo in terms of time and money

they're small compared to the actions

of the company as a whole in a sense this is a new version

of marketing a new manifestation

of what Marxist scholar Herbert maruse

calls the manuf facturing of false needs

to offload all their products onto the masses

capitalists need to make us believe that we actually need

the latest iPhone or those hemp fiber pants

rather than just wanted

for some companies that means

building an ecological or ethical

Aura through labels and one-off

actions because this signals

to Consumers with political and moral compasses

that they need to buy that specific

product to save the planet

or fight worker exploitation

this increasingly seems to be the case with the B Corp label an ethical

label that's been watered down and co-opted

as a means to clean up the image of exploitative

companies initially the B Corp label was born out of a desire to certify

the transparency accountability and social and environmental

measures companies took the label often certified

smaller more Niche brands for the actions they took

but unfortunately its process relies

heavily on good faith every 3 years a borp

company must submit for certification

but that process especially the impact report is entirely

self-reported a fact which as professor of policy at tside

University Matthew cotton in an interview with BBC notes

makes it relatively easy to manipulate

internal reporting procedures or misrepresent

findings and we're seeing the Fallout of that process in 2024

the label now seems to be just another tool for laundering

the dirty practices of capitalism

Nespresso a coffee subsidiary

of nestle notorious for their exploitation

of Water Resources recently was awarded the B Corp label

despite their dark history of child labor and worker exploitation

not to mention that they sell these single-use

plastic curig like machines

meanwhile the bottled water brand Aqua

which is a subsidiary

of Dan holds a b corpse certification

despite recently topping an audit of Indonesia's

biggest plastic polluters to make matters

even worse beab has launched the B movement

Builders initiative in 2020

which further Waters down the B Corp label

by recognizing multinational corporations

for their weak environmental

or social practices yes

some of these green initiatives

or fair trade labels

may actually be real there's no question that hemp fiber pants

are better for the environment

than fossil fuel-based polyester

genes ring on the hyper exploitation

of the Imperial periphery

indeed some businesses are genuinely

trying to do better within a broken

system but as we will soon see in the meat grinder that is the

capitalist mode of production

environmental destruction and worker

exploitation are inevitable because they are necessary

to capitalism itself but even if these corporations

are somehow environmental or moral Saints

ethical consumers don't seem to be walking the walk one 2005

study found that despite 30%

of UK consumers reporting that they have intentions

to buy ethical products

only 3% of consumers

actually follow up on their morals at the checkout counter

meanwhile in 2011 an extensive

book on the subject titled

the myth of ethical consumerism

revealed a similar intentions

action mismatch the authors conducted

numerous studies including one that the authors write

showed that we can manipulate

an individual's preference for fair trade products simply by prompting them and removing

their privacy with such actions

70% purchased the fair trade alternative

which was the same price

without such actions less Le than 1%

purchase the fair trade product

in short at the checkout counter

ethics rarely come into play

this is possibly because at the end of the day for many who live

paycheck to paycheck price is the ultimate

Factor when it comes to purchasing

decisions this Gap however shrouds

the larger picture ethical consumption

distracts us from the foundational

rot of capitalism our desire for and praise of Corporations

minimal reform as well as our hyperfocus

on which is the best

product distracts us from what's really happening

under the hood as one paper argues

ethical consumption inadvertently Works to thwart the destruction of capitalism

by reinforcing conventional capitalist

consumption essentially shopping ethically

instead of changing the system

actually doubles down on it voting with your dollar concretizes

the idea of consumer

sovereignty when the reality of who controls

production and generates desires

for those products are capitalists

and corporations elves we can only buy what is produced

and as a result

The Producers the owners of the means of production

have significantly more control of the Commodities

that enter the market what these owners

the board members the investors

the factory owners care about at the end of the day is not the

well-being of the planet or the health of workers

but instead profit and the continuation

of the corporation and it's here we finally arrive at the route

capitalism at its core relies

on the exploitation of Labor

through the lever of fossil fuels

I'll say that again in another way for the owners of production to make

a profit they must exploit

workers this specifically means that during an 8-hour

day for example if a laborer

is paid $80 a small chunk of the workers's

time is spent making $80

worth of product the rest of their time is unpaid

or Surplus labor that is where the capitalist

makes their profit this is the core engine

of capitalism and as Andreas m asserts in fossil Capital

this engine is facilitated

by the temporal and spatial

consistency of fossil fuels

fossil fuels allow capitalists

to bring factories in the workplace to cities where the cheapest labor resides

as well as keep the lights on in warehouses

and offices with exacting

consistency both of which are crucial for consistent

growth and competition in short worker

exploitation and environmental destruction

are inherent to the the capitalist mode of production

this is the real reason

why we can't have ethical consumption

under capitalism profits and the exploitation

of workers and combustion of fossil fuels that come with them

will always come before

morality and ethics in a capitalist

system not because a company is evil

but because that is how the system works

to stay competitive and provide value for stakeholders

companies must steal the Surplus labor from workers

and wield fossil fuels for maximum output

and consist consistency but this process of exploitation

and destruction is obscured

from the consumer in what Marx calls the hidden Abode of production

what we see on a store's shelf

is Thoroughly divorced from the laborers

and the long chain of Manufacturers

and materials it took to create those products

we only see the end result of production

that thing on the Shelf is a seemingly

magical object imbued with value

this is what Marx calls commodity

fetishism which the YouTube Collective Marxism

today described as so when Marx talks about commodity fetishism

he's similarly referring to our elusory

perception as consumers that Commodities

contain inherent value in and of themselves

appearing in a kind of vacuum that's devoid of the larger

social context of the production of these Commodities

by real people engaged

in exploitative labor relations

ethical consumerism Works precisely

because of this divorce

because that toy on the Shelf seems to have inherent

value because as we can't see the exploitation

in the vast chain of production

materials and labor that is needed to bring it into existence

we are able to be convinced

that the commodity holds

virtue or value in and of itself

that our purchasing of that pair of hemp pants or even that Ben and

Jerry's ice cream cone

can indeed be ethical

this shrouding of production

and the mystification of the product with morals

shifts our politics it means that instead of addressing the root problems of worker

and environmental exploitation directly through strikes

and pressure on the endless cycle of production

now we just focus on the end product

we are led to believe that buying more ethical stuff

is a political act

but in reality many ethical brands are just subsidiaries

of large hyper exploitative

multinationals like this organic

pet food brand that is owned by Nestle

or innocent smoothies which touts its human rights and environmental

work yet is owned by Coca-Cola

many ethical brands sadly are wolves

and sheep's clothing and they can often be aided and embedded

by watered down ethical labeling

and certifications ultimately however there is no ethical consumption

under capitalism not because everyone is evil and everything is owned by multinational

corporations there is no ethical consumption under capitalism

because the nature of capitalism

itself demands environmental destruction

and worker exploitation so if this is the case

then should we just give up and buy buy whatever we

want if there's no ethical consumption under capitalism

then we should just give up right we should never even strive

to purchase Necessities from places that are at least giving lip service to more

sustainable and less exploitative

Goods no individual choices

certainly matter but they are like a single mosquito

trying to drain an elephant of blood

power comes in the collective

form so yes when you are looking to buy something

strive for the more quote unquote

ethical choice but just know that it will ultimately

not create the system change

we need to end worker exploitation

and mitigate climate chaos

unfortunately right now we are left with bad choices

I'm not saying that it's useless to try to purchase a more ethical good

so you might as well just go with the cheapest

worst thing but rather

our efforts shouldn't be focused

on our individual consumer

choices if we are trying to fundamentally

change capitalism which is what the climate crisis calls for

if we look back through history

systems change comes not from people buying better but instead Collective movements

fighting for political change

whether that's the Socialist Revolution

in Russia the suffer Jets

the civil rights movement or anti- aarth

sure there was certainly

selective boycott and divestments

of Corporations but these were Tools in a much broader

toolkit of change shopping

has never been and will never be the Silver Bullet for social change

so how do we directly

address the exploitation and eological

destruction of capitalism at the

root we can do much more than buy better indeed the ecological

world of the future

challenges us to do so

a truly ethical world

is one where production

is socialized where the workplace

the factories and the landscape

is controlled owned and planned

by all people everywhere

a truly Democratic and socialist

economic system a world where goods are produced

not based on how much profit

they can make but instead on their use

and necessity this would undoubtedly

be a radically different world

where the ethical and environmental

desires of everyday people

actually matter because they would be integral

in the planning and production

processes but that world isn't built on buying better products

we can't buy our way out of capitalism

that world is built instead

on deep organizing on Trust

on tight relationships and Collective

action with the recent reelection

of trump alongside the broader Global rise of fascism

organizing and Community Building feels more important

than ever this is why next month's video is all about how we can

create Collective action and build power in our communities

if we are constantly being numbed and tranquilized

to the hores of capitalism

so that we never do anything

how do we actually do it how do we build a movement to end

capitalism and if you're among the many wonderful

people who signed up for nebula using my link you can watch that video

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