(Photo: Rachel / Flickr)A
quiet revolutionary struggle is brewing in the minds of the US
"millennial" generation, those 80 million Americans between ages 16 and
34. They are wrestling with the fundamental edict of capitalism: Buy and
you shall be happy. The millennials have not rejected consumerism, but
they have also not embraced it fully. They experience its very real
downsides - that also afflict millions of older Americans and go to the
heart of capitalist sustainability and morality.
Recent polls by marketing firms and the respected Pew Research Center
show strong environmental concerns among millennials, but hint at a
broader issue: whether consumerism itself makes for a good life and
society. Americans, especially the young, love their computers and sleep
with their iPhones next to their pillows, but still worry about the
negative sides of consumerism.
Technology itself may be contributing to what commentators have
called the "death of ownership" culture, since the issue is not owning a
book or television set, but having access through the web. Technology
is changing the very idea of ownership. But broader factors - including
the very availability of so much "stuff" - are contributing to making
consumerism less new, exciting and "cool."
In a recent informal study of Boston-area college students, I asked
them how they felt about American consumerism. Almost all said they
would prefer to be in a society that was less consumer-oriented, because
consumer culture gives them these headaches:
* It creates fierce competitive pressure to have more and newer "stuff."
* It complicates their lives, always worrying about how to maintain, pay for and use all the things they buy.
* It distracts from a quality life with their family and friends.
* It creates a "dirty" lifestyle that makes them and the planet sick.
* It leads to more inequality, with people seeking more at the expense of others.
* It distracts from political engagement - President Bush told them
to go shopping as he was gearing up for war with Iraq after 9/11.
* It imprisons them in a life full of products and empty of meaning.
These negative feelings are reflected in changing purchasing
patterns, with recent polls indicating that a growing percentage do not
want to buy a house or car. About 25 percent of Millennials do not want a
car, compared with 10 percent of their parents at their age. In 1978,
sixty-seven percent of 17-year-old Americans had drivers’ licenses,
compared with just 45 percent in 2010. Of course, these differences may
reflect reduced income, credit or safety issues as well as changes in
consumer attitudes.
These attitudes may seem like the self-indulgent whims of affluent,
high-consuming young Americans. Or they may seem a reaction to the Great
Recession, as they can no longer afford to buy so much. They could also
reflect a phase of life since young idealists too often turn to
traditional consumerism as they assume the responsibilities of adult
life. They certainly do not suggest that young Americans are decisively
rejecting consumerism.
But a quick history of American consumerism suggests something very
important: that the growing awareness of its real and serious downsides
can largely be explained by problems of sustainability and freedom at
the core of US capitalism.
Up until the 1920s, most Americans made their own clothes, grew their
own food and bought very little. They were producers and not consumers.
This changed in the 1920s, when the growth of capitalism had created
large corporations that could no longer prosper simply from World War I
production. They needed Americans to become consumers.
The corporations hired public relations experts and launched the
modern advertising industry. Retailers such as the giant Sears Roebuck
sent out millions of catalogs with alluring pictures of clothes,
furniture and other commodities. This was the beginning of "coerced
consumption." In the 1950s and 1960s, the new advertising culture
mushroomed and became massive and irresistible, with corporations
redefining American freedom as the freedom to buy.
Since profits require ever-expanding consumer markets, capitalism has
always coerced consumption, typically by seductive advertising but also
by harsher means. In the 1920s, Los Angeles had a huge electric trolley
system that allowed people to move around the city without cars.
General Motors responded by buying the trolley system and tearing up the
tracks. By the 1950s, the automakers succeeded in getting the US
government to underwrite highways and cars. People began to buy cars
because other transportation choices had been ripped away from them, a
perfect example of coerced consumption and a form of "un-freedom."
What is the solution for Americans unhappy with consumerism? Many are
beginning to make changes in their personal lives. Students are
starting to grow food in gardens at their universities. Many Americans
are living closer to work, so they can walk or bike to the job. Some are
looking for companies offering the choice of shorter work hours, which
liberates them from the work-and-spend treadmill. Some are joining the
"share economy," where they share things - Zip cars and bikes - with
others. Many are "downshifting" to a simpler life.
But constraining consumerism requires far larger changes in US
capitalism: severely limiting corporate power and rewriting corporate
charters and international trade agreements to emphasize worker rights
and environmental health. Quality must replace quantity as the measure
of economic and cultural success. Government tax and regulatory policy
must end extreme inequality and reduce production and consumption of
dirty energy, unhealthy food and luxury goods. Large investment in
public transit, community-owned enterprises, national parks and other
public goods must substantially reduce private consumption.
Such system-wide changes are politically difficult - and they may not
limit consumerism fast enough to avert climate catastrophe or reverse
dangerous inequality. But in the most optimistic scenario, they could
put society on a new path toward a more sustainable, cooperative way of
life.
These changes will be on the agenda of people around the world in the
21st century. Europe is already a far less consumerist society than the
United States. China, India and Brazil are struggling with
environmental justice and inequality that inevitably highlight the issue
of global consumerism. It will take a new social economy that rejects
American-style consumerism to solve these problems and help save the
world.
A Chinese translation of this article was originally published in the People’s Daily News, Beijing, China, on April 25, 2013.
