            B.5 Is capitalism empowering and based on human action?

   A key element of the social vision propounded by capitalism,
   particularly "libertarian" capitalism, is that of "voting" by the
   "customer," which is compared to political voting by the "citizen."
   According to Milton Friedman, "when you vote in the supermarket, you
   get precisely what you voted for and so does everyone else." Such
   "voting" with one's pocket is then claimed to be an example of the
   wonderful "freedom" people enjoy under capitalism (as opposed to
   "socialism," always equated by right-wingers with state socialism,
   which will be discussed in [1]section H). However, in evaluating this
   claim, the difference between customers and citizens is critical.

   The customer chooses between products on the shelf that have been
   designed and built by others for the purpose of profit. The consumer is
   the end-user, essentially a spectator rather than an actor, merely
   choosing between options created elsewhere by others. Market decision
   making is therefore fundamentally passive and reactionary, i.e. based
   on reacting to developments initiated by others. In contrast, the
   "citizen" is actively involved, at least ideally, in all stages of the
   decision making process, either directly or through elected delegates.
   Therefore, given decentralised and participatory-democratic
   organisations, decision making by citizens can be pro-active, based on
   human action in which one takes the initiative and sets the agenda
   oneself. Indeed, most supporters of the "citizen" model support it
   precisely because it actively involves individuals in participating in
   social decision making, so creating an educational aspect to the
   process and developing the abilities and powers of those involved.

   In addition, the power of the consumer is not evenly distributed across
   society. Thus the expression "voting" when used in a market context
   expresses a radically different idea than the one usually associated
   with it. In political voting everyone gets one vote, in the market it
   is one vote per dollar. What sort of "democracy" is it that gives one
   person more votes than tens of thousands of others combined?

   Therefore the "consumer" idea fails to take into account the
   differences in power that exist on the market as well as assigning an
   essentially passive role to the individual. At best they can act on the
   market as isolated individuals through their purchasing power. However,
   such a position is part of the problem for, as E.F. Schumacher argues,
   the "buyer is essentially a bargain hunter; he is not concerned with
   the origin of the goods or the conditions under which they have been
   produced. His sole concern is to obtain the best value for money." He
   goes on to note that the market "therefore respects only the surface of
   society and its significance relates to the momentary situation as it
   exists there and then. There is no probing into the depths of things,
   into the natural or social facts that lie behind them." [Small is
   Beautiful, p. 29]

   Indeed, the "customer" model actually works against any attempt to
   "probe" the facts of things. Firstly, consumers rarely know the
   significance or implications of the goods they are offered because the
   price mechanism withholds such information from them. Secondly, because
   the atomistic nature of the market makes discussion about the "why" and
   "how" of production difficult -- we get to choose between various
   "whats". Instead of critically evaluating the pros and cons of certain
   economic practices, all we are offered is the option of choosing
   between things already produced. We can only re-act when the damage is
   already done by picking the option which does least damage (often we do
   not have even that choice). And to discover a given products social and
   ecological impact we have to take a pro-active role by joining groups
   which provide this sort of information (information which, while
   essential for a rational decision, the market does not and cannot
   provide).

   Moreover, the "consumer" model fails to recognise that the decisions we
   make on the market to satisfy our "wants" are determined by social and
   market forces. What we are capable of wanting is relative to the forms
   of social organisation we live in. For example, people choose to buy
   cars because General Motors bought up and destroyed the tram network in
   the 1930s and people buy "fast food" because they have no time to cook
   because of increasing working hours. This means that our decisions
   within the market are often restricted by economic pressures. For
   example, the market forces firms, on pain of bankruptcy, to do whatever
   possible to be cost-effective. Firms that pollute, have bad working
   conditions and so on often gain competitive advantage in so doing and
   other firms either have to follow suit or go out of business. A "race
   to the bottom" ensures, with individuals making "decisions of
   desperation" just to survive. Individual commitments to certain values,
   in other words, may become irrelevant simply because the countervailing
   economic pressures are simply too intense (little wonder Robert Owen
   argued that the profit motive was "a principle entirely unfavourable to
   individual and public happiness").

   And, of course, the market also does not, and cannot, come up with
   goods that we do not want in our capacity as consumers but desire to
   protect for future generations or because of ecological reasons. By
   making the protection of the planet, eco-systems and other such "goods"
   dependent on the market, capitalism ensures that unless we put our
   money where our mouth is we can have no say in the protection of such
   goods as eco-systems, historical sites, and so on. The need to protect
   such "resources" in the long term is ignored in favour of short-termism
   -- indeed, if we do not "consume" such products today they will not be
   there tomorrow. Placed within a society that the vast majority of
   people often face difficulties making ends meet, this means that
   capitalism can never provide us with goods which we would like to see
   available as people (either for others or for future generations or
   just to protect the planet) but cannot afford or desire as consumers.

   It is clearly a sign of the increasing dominance of capitalist ideology
   that the "customer" model is being transferred to the political arena.
   This reflects the fact that the increasing scale of political
   institutions has reinforced the tendency noted earlier for voters to
   become passive spectators, placing their "support" behind one or
   another "product" (i.e. party or leader). As Murray Bookchin comments,
   "educated, knowledgeable citizens become reduced to mere taxpayers who
   exchange money for 'services.'" [Remaking Society, p. 71] In practice,
   due to state centralism, this turns the political process into an
   extension of the market, with "citizens" being reduced to "consumers."
   Or, in Erich Fromm's apt analysis, "The functioning of the political
   machinery in a democratic country is not essentially different from the
   procedure on the commodity market. The political parties are not too
   different from big commercial enterprises, and the professional
   politicians try to sell their wares to the public." [The Sane Society,
   pp. 186-187]

   But does it matter? Friedman suggests that being a customer is better
   than being a citizen as you get "precisely" what you, and everyone
   else, wants.

   The key questions here are whether people always get what they want
   when they shop. Do consumers who buy bleached newsprint and toilet
   paper really want tons of dioxins and other organochlorides in rivers,
   lakes and coastal waters? Do customers who buy cars really want traffic
   jams, air pollution, motorways carving up the landscape and the
   greenhouse effect? And what of those who do not buy these things? They
   are also affected by the decisions of others. The notion that only the
   consumer is affected by his or her decision is nonsense -- as is the
   childish desire to get "precisely" what you want, regardless of the
   social impact.

   Perhaps Friedman could claim that when we consume we also approve of
   its impact. But when we "vote" on the market we cannot say that we
   approved of the resulting pollution (or distribution of income or
   power) because that was not a choice on offer. Such changes are
   pre-defined or an aggregate outcome and can only be chosen by a
   collective decision. In this way we can modify outcomes we could bring
   about individually but which harm us collectively. And unlike the
   market, in politics we can change our minds and revert back to a former
   state, undoing the mistakes made. No such option is available on the
   market.

   So Friedman's claims that in elections "you end up with something
   different from what you voted for" is equally applicable to the market
   place.

   These considerations indicate that the "consumer" model of human action
   is somewhat limited (to say the least!). Instead we need to recognise
   the importance of the "citizen" model, which we should point out
   includes the "consumer" model within it. Taking part as an active
   member of the community does not imply that we stop making individual
   consumption choices between those available, all it does is potentially
   enrich our available options by removing lousy choices (such as ecology
   or profit, cheap goods or labour rights, family or career).

   In addition we must stress its role in developing those who practice
   the "citizen" model and how it can enrich our social and personal life.
   Being active within participatory institutions fosters and develops an
   active, "public-spirited" type of character. Citizens, because they are
   making collective decisions have to weight other interests as well as
   their own and so consider the impact on themselves, others, society and
   the environment of possible decisions. It is, by its very nature, an
   educative process by which all benefit by developing their critical
   abilities and expanding their definition of self-interest to take into
   account themselves as part of a society and eco-system as well as as an
   individual. The "consumer" model, with its passive and exclusively
   private/money orientation develops few of people's faculties and
   narrows their self-interest to such a degree that their "rational"
   actions can actually (indirectly) harm them.

   As Noam Chomsky argues, it is "now widely realised that the economists
   'externalities' can no longer be consigned to footnotes. No one who
   gives a moment's thought to the problems of contemporary society can
   fail to be aware of the social costs of consumption and production, the
   progressive destruction of the environment, the utter irrationality of
   the utilisation of contemporary technology, the inability of a system
   based on profit or growth maximisation to deal with needs that can only
   be expressed collectively, and the enormous bias this system imposes
   towards maximisation of commodities for personal use in place of the
   general improvement of the quality of life." [Radical Priorities, pp.
   190-1]

   The "citizen" model takes on board the fact that the sum of rational
   individual decisions may not yield a rational collective outcome
   (which, we must add, harms the individuals involved and so works
   against their self-interest). Social standards, created and enriched by
   a process of discussion and dialogue can be effective in realms where
   the atomised "consumer" model is essentially powerless to achieve
   constructive social change, never mind protect the individual from
   "agreeing" to "decisions of desperation" that leave them and society as
   a whole worse off (see also sections [2]E.3 and [3]E.5).

   This is not to suggest that anarchists desire to eliminate individual
   decision making, far from it. An anarchist society will be based upon
   individuals making decisions on what they want to consume, where they
   want to work, what kind of work they want to do and so on. So the aim
   of the "citizen" model is not to "replace" the "consumer" model, but
   only to improve the social environment within which we make our
   individual consumption decisions. What the "citizen" model of human
   action desires is to place such decisions within a social framework,
   one that allows each individual to take an active part in improving the
   quality of life for us all by removing "Hobson choices" as far as
   possible.

References

   1. file://localhost/home/mauro/baku/debianize/maint/anarchy/secHcon.html
   2. file://localhost/home/mauro/baku/debianize/maint/anarchy/secE3.html
   3. file://localhost/home/mauro/baku/debianize/maint/anarchy/secE5.html
