Think Capitalist Consumerism is Bad? Wait Until You See Political Consumerism

The parallels are strong—and troubling.

A common worry voiced by critics of our modern, market-driven economy is that capitalism leads to — and depends on — consumerism. For capitalism to sustain itself, corporations need us to always be buying whatever it is they sell. They thus work to make consumerism central to our culture, and even to our very sense of ourselves. Anti-capitalists argue that because this consumerism is so destructive — to us, our society, and the environment — free markets must be reined in and consumerism opposed. But what if there’s another kind of consumerism, just as worrying, yet which we rarely notice, and would likely grow through our attempts to limit the capitalist variety?

Capitalism and Consumerism

Capitalist consumerism, it’s said, leads to myriad pathologies, hurting our well-being, relationships, health, economy, and planet — and it does so without providing much value in return. Worse, consumerism corrupts our basic sense of what’s valuable in the first place, tricking us into finding value in the wrong places, and so creating chronic dissatisfaction with what we have. We’re trained not just to want the wrong things, but to always feel we don’t have enough of them.