Social democracy under consumer capitalism

So the issues for the left today are not those of exploitation, poverty and discrimination. At the dawn of the 21st century, the sicknesses we face are overwhelmingly the sicknesses of affluence. We see epidemics of the diseases of boredom and alienation, especially gambling, television catatonia and recreational shopping.

We see an epidemic of drug use, both legal and illegal. Our response to unruly children is to drug them into submission with Ritalin.

For all of the hype, the information superhighway is principally a conduit for pornography, and there is an insatiable demand for soft-core titillation on television and video.

Moreover, at a time of unprecedented levels of personal wealth, citizens of rich countries are afflicted with an epidemic of psychological disorders. According to one study, depression has increased ten-fold among Americans born since World War II.

Young people, the principal beneficiaries of super-affluence, are most prone to clinical depression, manifested in record rates of teenage suicide and other social pathologies such as self-destructive drug taking.

Today, our greatest afflictions are associated not with deprivation but with over-consumption. We are gorging ourselves and growing fat. The volume of waste we generate is enormous. We discard and destroy vast quantities of useful goods. Driven to consume more and more, we are willing to pour our wastes into the atmosphere, oceans and landfills, causing severe damage to the natural world that sustains us.

In the age of global consumer capitalism then, the defining predicament is not a lack of money, but a lack of meaning. From a mass of psychological studies, confirmed by folk wisdom, there is one factor that stands out as differentiating more happy from less happy people- a sense of meaning and purpose in life.

Yet a lack of purpose is the hollow centre of life in modern consumer capitalism. It is the hole we try to fill with consumption. As long as we cleave to the deprivation model we validate the belief in the general populace that the foremost means to social and personal betterment is continuously to raise incomes. The left reinforces the belief by those in government, of whatever party, that everything must be sacrificed on the altar of economic growth. In the interests of more growth we must have privatisation, free trade, small government, lower taxes, corporate welfare, competition policy and reduced welfare payments. We cannot adopt policies of sustainability because they might affect growth.

The left is as much the slave of growth fetishism as the right. The deprivation model draws the power from progressive people, not only because it means they share the fundamental goal of neo-liberalism but, crucially, because it prevents the left from joining with the most serious political and intellectual challenge to consumer capitalism: environmentalism. It explains the uneasy dissonance between the left’s preoccupation with deprivation and environmentalists’ emphasis on the perils of abundance. Put crudely, one wants more growth and one wants less.

The political implications of all of this are profound. The left must discard its old understanding of the world. We must accept that capitalism has moved to a phase of abundance broadly spread. We must focus on the things that really do affect the well-being of ordinary people and the processes that condition society. For despite its extraordinary successes, and at a time of complete political hegemony, capitalism is more fragile than it has ever been. Why? With more wealth at their disposal than ever before, most people could simply choose not to participate, to no longer notice the advertisements, to step off the materialist treadmill, to discard the DVD player, the second house, the luxury car, the holidays abroad, the meaningless acquisitions. To do so would not mean taking to the barricades, or putting themselves on the breadline.

All it takes is a recognition that personal contentment is more important than money, and that it is possible to find a purpose in life that is fulfilling and self-expressive. If ordinary people today are exploited, then it is by common consent. They choose the gilded cage. We need a politics that will point out that the door of the gilded cage is open, so that ordinary people can achieve liberation and authentic lives in which community and relationships are valued above wealth and status. We need a politics for a society in which the citizens are committed to a rich life rather than a life of riches.

A post-growth politics would deprive capital of much of its political power, because people would everywhere reject the assumption that everything – including our communities, the natural world and our dignity – should be sacrificed on the altar of growth.