In recent publications Clive Hamilton and Richard Deniss have articulated a critique of consumerist consumption in Australia which is meant to provide the basis for a radical environmental politics. They do this because they recognise that patterns of consumption, particularly but not exclusively in the First World, are the real causes of the numerous environmental crises bearing down upon us (of which climate change is not the only one and not necessarily the major one). The heart of their position lies in the claim that consumerist consumption is not just bad for morally considerable third parties, hence morally wrong, but also intrinsically bad in an axiological (or, if one is sufficiently Aristotelian, ontological) sense: it is a sub-optimal form of life for consumerist consumers themselves. With this, they seek to provide such consumers with a motive for behavioural change.
The account given by Hamilton and Deniss has enjoyed extraordinary popularity and influence. This reflects the only psychologically explainable attractiveness of the tradition of Veblen to which it belongs. Yet all such Veblenesque accounts are seriously deficient, both empirically and theoretically. Precisely for this reason, philosophy should turn its attention to a critically theoretic account of consumerism. So, too, should it turn its attention to the question implicit in such an account, the question, namely, of what it is to live well, considered not as a question faced by the existentially challenged individual, but as a social and political one faced by society as a whole.
In this paper, I undertake some first steps towards this goal. First, I provide a critique of Hamilton and Deniss. Secondly, I use some ideas from the early Baudrillard in order to intimate how one might provide an account of contemporary consumption as consumerist without embracing the tradition of Veblen. This account fits well with the facts of current economic life: long, complex and constantly shifting supply chains which standard techno-regulatory measures (product labelling, certification, fair trade, etc.) cannot effectively control. One fact in particular stands out: the emergence of mega-retailing as occupying the commanding heights, not just with regard to producers but also with regard to consumers. (Think here of the Fresh Food People!). This fact I use, thirdly, to interpret the freedom-in-unfreedom of the (post)modern consumerist consumer as described by Baudrillard. Fourthly and conversely, I use reconstruction of Baudrillard to identify how to respond to these facts: ecological citizenship merely sitting alongside ecological consumption is ineffective; these roles must be combined in and through reorganisation of the supply chains themselves. Phenomena like urban agriculture, community gardens and farmers’ markets are first manifestations of this. We must save our backyards!