Does neoliberalism’s ethical consumer create more problems than she solves? A discussion of a neocommunitarian alternative

Abstract

The ethical consumer occupies a significant position in the current capitalist system as the market-based answer to a whole range of negative externalities. Unfortunately, she has been proven to behave out of sync with her ethical values and thus has been taken apart by scholars as a mere myth. Yet, businesses and politicians continue to believe in her abilities. This, we argue, is not caused by them being blind to her failures but because the category of the ethical consumer represents an ideal solution in the neoliberal discourse that embraces the holy trinity of an unregulated market, personal emancipation and the freedom of choice. Unfortunately, the ethical consumer has turned out to be a poorly suited solution to the negative externalities as ecological and social critiques continue to emerge. In response, a neocommunitarian discourse seems to gain strength, replacing the neoliberal version of the market as a bifurcation point between customers and suppliers instead bringing together businesses and consumers in a new type of network formation overcoming the bifurcation between consumers and producers.

Niklas Luhmann's anti-totalitarian observation of systems

“…Despite the pandemic and the manifold shifts in crisis in all directions from health to the economy, the rule of law, politics, education, art and motivation, the compensatory life of the consumer society maintains its race toward compensating (Luhmann, 1981, p. 8) for the irreplaceable. Even the person-centered “ethical consumer” is not there to save us – all he/she does is to demand and consume more products just in disguise of the “good choice” (Laursen and Kure, 2019). Thus, pseudo-consumption, travel, cars, highways, pop-smart glitter and entertainment make us lose our judgment.…”