While some reflect on ethical consumption, are we still just shopping?

Foodthink’s Take

Paying for one’s conscience, or spending based on a set of moral principles and values, is a form of ‘ethical consumption’ that differs from traditional consumerism. It reflects the consumer’s desire to support values they identify with through their purchases: organic certification, Fairtrade, zero deforestation, 100% renewable materials… But when we trust the promises on product labels implicitly, have we simply fallen into another consumer trap?

Is this just another snare set by capital? How can we avoid being deceived and instead practise truly responsible consumption? Foodthink has been authorised to translate the article ‘Manifesto Against Anti-Capitalist Consumption’ from The Jester, the student publication of Wageningen University, in the hope that it provides some food for thought.

Anti-capitalist shopping takes many forms; common examples include supporting small businesses and ‘responsible baking’. It also manifests as commodity coding and labelling—such as Fairtrade, cruelty-free, and ethical product certifications—designed for the anti-capitalist Gen Z shopping demographic.

While Gen Z is wary of greenwashing and the ‘woke’ brands sweeping across social media, they have forgotten a fundamental truth: “there is no ethical consumption under capitalism.”

I used to treat shopping as a form of self-healing. After school, wandering through the aisles of Jumbo or Albert Heijn (well-known Dutch supermarket chains) was a great way to unwind. Forget the chaos; the magic of an enticing dinner and gourmet delicacies would breathe new life into my soul. But gradually, the shelves began to tell me things about the world.

At first, it was the nutritional labels whispering in my ear, telling me that the things I had eaten since childhood were not healthy at all. Then came the Bio (European organic certification) or organic labels. I felt I had to know whether the products I bought were naturally organic or terrifying synthetic creations. The vision of rivers overflowing with microplastics steered me towards organic products.

Then appeared a ‘V’—the vegan label. I was shocked to discover that many products that seemed to have nothing to do with animals actually contained animal derivatives. Why was there milk powder in crisps? Now, every item undergoes a four-stage check before it enters my shopping basket.

But on some shelves, I found another label. The “Fairtrade” label hinted at the unfairness of the conventional trade system. The entire store began to dissolve before my eyes. Now, there were perhaps only three products in the whole shop that could go into my trolley.

All these labels function as commodity codes. Behind every code is a story. Chemical fertilisers harm biodiversity and the environment; we need to develop more organic farming. The production of animal-based foods is not only cruel to the animals born for slaughter but also unsustainable, increasing global greenhouse gas emissions. Products like chocolate, avocados, and coconut milk mostly come from around the world, where workers are subjected to brutal and horrific exploitation. We must find a way for exploited workers to reclaim the fair value their labour deserves.

These commodity codes reveal the injustices of the capitalist production system, while also embodying the vision that a just world is possible. If Tony’s Chocolonely (a Dutch chocolate brand popular for its ‘slave-free’ products) can do it, why can’t all chocolate production be freed from slave labour?

Ethical commodity coding requires a certain level of consumer awareness to be effective. For example, at the Saturday market in Wageningen, Fairtrade is meaningless unless you take a minute to see where this Colombian coffee actually comes from. Every concept behind such product labels has a long history; the accompanying struggles, violence, and activism push these dreams of liberation before the Western consumer, allowing a mere label to stir their conscience.

These dreams all contain a longing to transcend the limitations of capitalist production—a longing for a world liberated from slave labour, environmental destruction, animal cruelty, and climate change. This is the anti-capitalist longing.

However, this raises a new question: by adopting eye-catching designs and making ‘slave-free’ labels as prominent as caramel or hazelnut flavour labels—is it not somewhat disrespectful to reduce humanitarian stories, which intertwine suffering and revolutionary hope, to mere product labels? But this is the logic of ethical production within capitalism. How can we turn liberation into a business? How can we monetise revolution?

Many companies have already begun doing so, promising revolutionary change within the framework of capitalism. Fossil fuel cars are problematic, so they build a world-changing electric car. Consequently, numerous EV companies have emerged. Manufacturing these cars often consumes vast amounts of natural resources and materials, offering little benefit to the Earth. But once the company’s share price rises, the Earth no longer matters.

One of capitalism’s great tricks is to distill and repackage our desire for change and liberation, then embed it back into the very structures that bind us. It transforms these anti-capitalist movements into coded commodity entries. As a result, to some extent, the consumer is made a scapegoat for the failings of capitalism. We are told it is our responsibility to make the ‘right’ choice, to step up, to be grown-ups, and to set this broken world right.

The absurdity of ethical marketing seems obvious. Surely no one in Wageningen believes that buying organic food can fix our food and farming systems? Or that if everyone went vegan, the vegan shelves at Albert Heijn would solve the climate crisis.

Nonetheless, ethical marketing still attracts us because we deeply long for that same world—an ideal world where the food system does not cause such great harm and animals are not born simply to be slaughtered. This appeal works even on issues we barely understand or know nothing about. All this responsibility is placed upon us, demanding that we become ‘ethical consumers’ faced with impossible choices.

And so, the great cycle of consumption continues. When sales of iPhones, Oreos, and Coca-Cola stagnate, they invent new products—old sugar water, new flavour. Meanwhile, those ethical goods that promised to right the wrongs are relegated to product categories that barely sustain their sales.

The pragmatic approach may be to do the best we can with ethical choices; even without large-scale systemic change, we can push capitalist production to become more ethical, with less harm and oppression.

Making ethical consumption choices requires a great deal of knowledge. One must understand the processes behind the labels as well as what the labels fail to cover. Imagine doing this for every grocery shop and every consumption decision. If our knowledge were systematic enough, if we paid for the products and brands driving change and penalised companies that refused to correct their behaviour, and if we persisted in ethical consumption over the long term and encouraged others to do the same, it would be possible to change the system with our wallets.

This strategy is reminiscent of boycott movements, divestment campaigns, and ‘cancelling’ brands. For instance, boycotting Shell, or pressuring Nike to pay sweatshop workers higher wages.

However, this masks the essence of contemporary capitalism. It assumes that by ‘fixing’ a single company, all problems can be solved. But that is not how it works; from smartphones to water bottles, most products you can buy involve 10 to 100 companies across the globe in their production. This is the nature of global supply chains. The same supply chain infrastructure supplies both so-called ‘ethical’ products and unethical ones.

The world we live in is saturated with platforms and virtual marketplaces. From virtual bookshelves to undersea server farms, these all-encompassing markets sell computing power to every industry worldwide. Amazon sells everything. Unilever’s portfolio ranges from The Vegetarian Butcher (a plant-based meat brand) to frozen meat producers where animal welfare is abysmal and production costs are slashed to the absolute minimum.

Here, there is no room for genuine choice or taking a stand; on both the ‘ethical’ and ‘unethical’ sides of the industry, the same technologies, operational methods, personnel, and marketing tactics are at work.

The issue remains production. The system of commodity production has become so vast and globalised that individual companies exist only as fictions on the stock market. Every link in the chain of manufacturing and production requires the global flow of people, industry, and capital.

This is why symbolic gestures aimed at holding companies accountable are so powerless.

When Nike is accused, it simply outsources clothing production to another company. Ultimately, Nike is not a producer of clothing; it merely owns the trademark. When you boycott Amazon to support local bookstores, those bookstores may still be supplied by companies owned by Amazon. Almost every action we take online is processed through server farms owned by Google, Amazon, or Microsoft.

Within the wider framework of financial capitalism, even these corporate giants cease to exist as independent entities; they are owned and operated by investment funds worth billions of dollars. These funds invest in revolutionary startups while hedging their bets by investing in traditional ‘oppressive’ companies. Regardless of which brand the consumer chooses, the net effect is an increase in the rate of return on capital.

Consequently, we are faced with a multitude of inconsequential choices. These choices have little impact on the existing system or the changes it promises, yet they invariably affect our psychological state. They slowly drain our energy, leaving us unable to contribute to change in any meaningful way. The convenient, feel-good grand narratives they provide are, in essence, a false sense of achievement. We must not fall for this; we need to preserve our energy to achieve truly meaningful change.

The illusion of choice is the lifeblood of capitalism. Not because it changes capitalism, but because it sustains its existence. We allow capitalism to control every sphere of our lives because it promises this mythical choice. Choosing our food, our studies, our rooms, and our jobs. (A nod to the fans of *Trainspotting*.)

But this choice was never real. It is an illusion crafted by advertising agencies. Even sunsets are sold, as if natural landscapes could actually be possessed. Only when we abandon the illusion of choice can we see the shackles of capitalism. Once the illusion of choice is stripped away, much of the ‘freedom’ in our lives begins to vanish. The reality is that people engage in meaningless work just to fuel consumption—and that is intolerable.

Only by abandoning anti-capitalist consumption can we begin to ask the real questions about anti-capitalist production.

Editor: Foodthink

Design: Z X