Forgiving Ethical Consumerism

A dilemma kept cropping up because I needed a snack. At the time, I was trying to do three things at once: finish my philosophy PhD program, teach undergraduate philosophy courses, and organize a union with my fellow graduate employees. I was busy, frazzled, and juggling what felt like three full-time jobs. I’d frequently schedule meetings with prospective union members at a specific coffee shop, which I chose because it was close to campus but also technically off-campus – at a remove from the watchful eyes of advisors and bosses while still being convenient for workers to get to.

In the rush of a typical day, I’d often forget to make myself enough or anything to eat, so I’d often arrive at these meetings pretty famished. I was trying to be mostly vegan, so I had one option: a Sabra hummus and pretzel cup. Aside from the fact that this snack is bland and not particularly appealing, Sabra is an Israeli company and a named target of the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement, a movement I very much support. So the bland hummus cup came with a side of complicity in Israeli apartheid. But if I chose not to buy the Sabra product, I’d have to go with a non-vegan snack, which also violated my commitment to non-human animal rights.

So my organizing meetings at this coffee shop often came along with the fraught question of which value—justice for Palestinians or justice for non-human animals—to prioritize. A third option—going to a different coffee shop that had vegan snacks—wasn’t appealing either, as the nearest place with vegan options was farther away. Anyone who has organized before knows that it’s hard enough to get workers to meet with you even when you propose a maximally convenient meeting place, so suggesting a less convenient spot didn’t seem right either.

I never found a solution. On days when I had the time and foresight, I’d make sure to pack a vegan snack before I left for campus. But on many other days, I was juggling so many different obligations that I wasn’t able to do that. So I often just picked at random. One day, Sabra hummus; the next, a non-vegan muffin or pastry. I always felt a little bit guilty about whatever choice I made, but most of the time, I’d just try to push that guilt from my mind to focus on recruiting the next union member.

I often think about this situation when I see a specific debate play out between people in various corners of the left. Many socialists will argue some version of the following: “there is no ethical consumption under capitalism”, so, it follows, individual consumer choices don’t matter. But others will often reply that we can “walk and chew gum”, meaning that we don’t have to choose between systemic change and making our consumption choices more ethical. We can and should do both simultaneously.

I’m largely sympathetic with the “walk and chew gum” response and think that this stock dismissal of ethical consumption practices is misguided, and sometimes even made in bad faith. One reason it strikes me as misguided is that it appears to be too absolute. While I agree that capitalism forces us into dilemmas all the time, where we are faced with nothing but bad choices (I even wrote about this here!), this doesn’t mean that we can just throw up our hands and do whatever we want. There may be no truly ethical consumption under capitalism, but we can still make better and worse choices in that environment. For example, insofar as we are forced to buy our own clothes and don’t have access to state-produced unisex jumpsuits (kidding–mostly!), I’m going to do my best to buy second-hand clothes where I can, and not contribute to the fast fashion industry. If I learn that the owner of a local coffee shop is a bigot and is refusing to hire trans people (or people from any other marginalized group) I will try to buy coffee elsewhere. And I think that the ‘no ethical consumption under capitalism’ refrain is sometimes deployed in bad faith because I believe many leftists agree with these general ideas–but then selectively deploy that argument against veganism, or against other ethical consumption choices that feel particularly inconvenient for them.

But at the same time, my coffee shop dilemma reminds me that the “walk and chew gum” response misses the mark in a way, as well. It’s not as if there are no tradeoffs when we try to consume ethically while also advocating for systemic and institutional change. Sometimes you can spend so much time working towards this kind of change, and because of that, you just run out of time to make ethical consumption choices–like I did when I faced my dilemma at the coffee shop. Other times, prioritizing ethical consumption choices can distract you from taking actions that can contribute to systemic changes. For example, I remember being a few minutes late to meetings with potential union members at this coffee shop on more than one occasion because I was rushing to pack a vegan snack before leaving my apartment. So it isn’t exactly like walking and chewing gum–it’s more like walking while looking at your phone. It’s not deeply hazardous (I’m not analogizing it to texting and driving, for example), but it also isn’t ideal. At best, you’re a bit distracted; at worst, you’ll trip and fall on your face.

But what does this all mean practically? Unfortunately, I think it means that there are no easy answers. The appeal of both the ‘walk and chew gum’ and the ‘no ethical consumption under capitalism’ approaches is that they make these choices seem straightforward. But what do we do when they aren’t?

Hopefully it’s clear by now that I’m not pretending as though I have everything figured out. But I’ll say a bit about how I’ve tried to approach things since I wrestled with my coffee shop dilemma on the regular. I have come to one conclusion I feel confident in: the time you spend working toward systemic and institutional change, particularly in contexts where you have a direct influence over the institution in question (like your own workplace, your own apartment complex, etc.) deserves to be prioritized over the time and effort it takes to make ethical consumption choices. There are a lot of reasons I think this is right, but the most straightforward one is the potential for far greater impact. While organizing my graduate employee union took an enormous amount of time and effort, it also had a clear and weighty impact: graduate workers won across-the-board raises, major improvements to health insurance, far better leave policies, and much more. An added bonus is that improving institutions can also help us have the time and money to be better consumers. With a healthy raise, it’s easier (though still not easy!) for a graduate employee to absorb the extra cost of buying a book from a local bookstore rather than ordering it on Amazon.

But when it comes to choosing between types of ethical consumption, I’m less clear on what I think. I’m tempted by the following idea as a general rule of thumb: the closer the choice comes to being part of an organized, collective action, the more it deserves to be prioritized. This is because, the more collective that an action becomes, the better chance we have of it having an impact. This would probably mean that I should have chosen the non-vegan snack over the Sabra product, since BDS is an organized movement engaged in collective action around clear targets and specific demands, while veganism is closer to an expression of my own moral belief that animals are not food, and doesn’t have as much of a collective component.

I still hesitate, though, because of just how much that moral commitment means to me. This may not be compelling to non-vegans, but treating animals as products to be bought and consumed feels, to me, like a fundamental category error. These are living creatures with lives and families of their own, not products for my consumption. While I do think that one day we will look back on our treatment of animals as a kind of dystopian science fiction horror, the world doesn’t currently align with that belief. And that means that choices we make now to avoid complicity with animal exploitation will have little impact. I sometimes view being vegan as an expression of hope or faith in humanity: that one day we will come to recognize the moral wrongness of how we use the non-humans who share the planet with us. But we can’t reach that place if no one is willing to start now, by opting out of exploiting animals to the best of our ability. If no one is willing to help illuminate a different path forward, we’ll never find it. So this leads me to a confused place: impact matters, but it isn’t everything. Sometimes simply expressing your own moral belief through your action can be important, even if it has relatively little impact.

I titled this essay ‘forgiving ethical consumerism’ for two reasons. On the one hand, I think anyone who attempts to consume ethically under capitalism needs to start from an acknowledgment that capitalism fundamentally constrains the choices that we are able to make, causing us to fail and fall short all the time. That doesn’t make any of us bad people. The person who supports a family on a very low income isn’t going to have the money to buy a $10 fair trade chocolate bar over a Nestle product, or buy a book from a local bookstore instead of Amazon. Our attitude toward people in this situation should not be to blame or shame, or wag our fingers and accuse them of not being committed to some cause. It should motivate us to organize our workplaces, apartment complexes, etc., to challenge the system that constrains our choices in the first place. So we should be forgiving toward ourselves and others when attempts to consume ethically inevitably fall short.

On the other hand, I think that leftists, self-included, need a reminder not to scoff or look down upon people who do attempt to consume ethically, even if these choices are low-impact and are more about signaling one’s own values or commitments. Capitalism not only constrains our options when it comes to what kinds of consumer choices we make– the poor person can’t always afford to consume ethically– but it also makes it difficult to access other, non-consumer avenues for making change. Organizing your workplace, your apartment complex, etc., is vital and is the best hope we have— but it’s also really fucking hard. Even if your boss or landlord doesn’t retaliate against you, it takes an immense amount of time, commitment, and emotional energy. I keep coming back to something my sister, who just gave birth to her second kid, said to me when she told me she recently cancelled her Amazon Prime subscription on moral grounds: “I don’t have time to do much else right now”. This resonated with me deeply, as I thought back to how little time—both in the sense of literal time, and in the more general sense of emotional energy- I had for organizing after I gave birth, and how difficult it was to eventually start creating that time again with so little social support for families. So people who feel that their primary vehicle for making change is through their consumption are often just doing their best in an environment which systematically constrains their options. They also may be trying to retain a little bit of their own integrity in a system that seems to do nothing except grind that down.

The philosopher Brandon Hogan touched on this in a short piece about why boycotts can still have moral value, even if they have no impact:

Personal integrity is important. Living out and expressing our values (even if only to ourselves) is essential. Even if the corporation never hears your voice or your group’s, you will hear it. That voice needs to be one that you can respect. As a consumer, you can gain a sense of dignity in knowing that corporations can’t manipulate you with convenience and price, that you have principles that extend beyond your personal bottom line. That knowledge is invaluable.

While I don’t think we should take this too far — definitely don’t spend so much time boycotting things that you run out of time to organize your workplace or your apartment complex — I do think that it should cause us to see these kinds of individual choices as having moral value. And who knows— maybe if some ethical consumption practices help us generate self- knowledge that corporations cannot manipulate us, that knowledge can help us build the motivation we need to do the really hard, but really important thing: organize.