Others Are Rethinking Ethical Consumption – Are We Still Just Shopping?

Foodthink Says

Paying with a clear conscience, or spending to back the ethics and ideals you believe in, constitutes a form of ethical consumption that stands apart from the conventional shopping rush. It reflects how consumers use their purchasing power to support the values they hold dear: organic certification, fair trade accreditation, zero-deforestation claims, products made with 100% renewable materials, and so on. Yet, as we place our trust in the promises printed on product labels, are we merely walking into another consumer trap?

Is this another snare set by capital? How can we avoid being duped and put truly responsible consumption into practice? Foodthink has secured permission to translate an article from The Jester, the student newspaper at Wageningen University, titled “A Manifesto Against ‘Anti-Capitalist Consumption’”. We hope it offers some food for thought.

Anti-capitalist shopping takes many guises. Common examples include supporting independent businesses and “responsible baking”. It also manifests through product codes and labelling, such as certification marks for fair trade, zero animal cruelty, and ethical goods, all of which are pitched at Gen Z shoppers with an anti-capitalist bent.

Although Gen Z has grown wary of greenwashing and the “woke” brands sweeping social media, they have overlooked a fundamental truth: “There is no such thing as ethical consumption under capitalism.”

I used to treat shopping as a form of self-care. After school, drifting between the aisles of Jumbo or Albert Heijn (both prominent Dutch supermarket chains) was a reliable way to unwind. I’d leave the day’s stresses behind, letting the promise of a tempting dinner and the sheer magic of food reinvigorate my spirit. But gradually, the shelves began to tell me stories about the world.

It started with nutrition labels whispering in my ear, telling me that the foods I’d been eating all my life were anything but healthy. Next came the Bio (European organic certification) or organic labels. I had to know whether what I was buying was genuinely natural or a dreadful synthetic concoction. Vivid images of rivers choked with microplastics steered me firmly towards organic products.

Then came the “V” – the vegetarian symbol. I was stunned to discover that many products appearing entirely animal-free actually contained animal-derived ingredients. Why was there skimmed milk powder in my crisps? Now, every single item has to pass a four-point check before it earns its place in my trolley.

Yet, on other shelves, I stumbled upon another label altogether. The “fair trade” mark hinted at the deep inequities of the conventional trade system. The entire store began to fracture before my eyes. Suddenly, I felt that perhaps only three items in the whole shop were worthy of my trolley.

All of these labels function as codes for the products. Each code carries a story. Chemical fertilisers are devastating to biodiversity and the environment; we need to expand organic farming. Animal agriculture is not only cruel to creatures bred for slaughter, but also unsustainable, driving up global greenhouse gas emissions. Commodities like chocolate, avocados, and coconut milk are largely sourced from across the globe, where workers endure brutal and grim exploitation. We must find a way to ensure these exploited labourers are paid the fair value their work deserves.

These product codes expose the injustices inherent in capitalist production, while simultaneously holding out a vision that a fair world is indeed possible. If Tony’s Chocolonely (a Dutch chocolate brand renowned for its “slave-free” products) can pull it off, why can’t every chocolate manufacturer eliminate slave labour?

These ethical codes only function when paired with a baseline of consumer awareness. Take the Saturday market in Wageningen, for instance: unless you take a moment to check exactly where this coffee from Colombia actually originates, the fair trade label is entirely meaningless. Behind every concept underpinning these labels lies a long and complex history. The struggles, violence, and radical movements that accompanied them have thrust these dreams of liberation squarely in front of Western consumers, allowing a simple sticker to stir their conscience.

Each of these dreams carries within it a yearning to transcend the confines of capitalist production – a longing for a world liberated from forced labour, ecological devastation, animal cruelty, and climate change. This, in essence, is an anti-capitalist yearning.

Yet, this raises an altogether new question: what happens when we simply slap on an eye-catching design, making a “no forced labour” badge just as prominent as labels for caramel or hazelnut flavour – “Is it perhaps deeply disrespectful to distil humanitarian narratives—intertwined with suffering and revolutionary hope—down to simple product labels? And yet, this is precisely the logic behind ethical production in capitalism. But how can we commodify liberation? How can we monetise revolution?

A growing number of companies are already pursuing this path, promising revolutionary change within the confines of capitalism. Fossil-fuel cars cause problems? Then let’s build electric vehicles that will transform the world. Suddenly, a host of EV startups have popped up, yet manufacturing these vehicles often requires immense quantities of natural resources and raw materials, offering scant benefit to the planet. But once corporate share prices climb, the planet ceases to matter.

Capitalism’s masterstroke is to distil our yearning for change and liberation, repackage it, and slot it straight back into the very structures that constrain us. It reduces anti-capitalist movements to barcoded commodities. The result is that, to some extent, consumers are left to shoulder the blame for capitalism’s failings. It falls to us to make the “right” choices, to step up, act as adults, and steer this fractured world back on course.

The folly of ethical marketing might seem self-evident. Surely no one at Wageningen genuinely believes that buying organic food alone can repair our food and farming systems? Or that, if everyone turned vegetarian, the plant-based shelves at Albert Heijn would somehow solve the climate crisis?

And yet, ethical marketing continues to captivate us, because we are driven by a deep-seated longing for precisely that kind of world—a place where the food system causes far less harm, and where animals are not born merely to be slaughtered. This allure extends even to causes and issues we barely understand, or know nothing about at all. The entire burden of responsibility is thrust upon our shoulders, demanding that we become ethical consumers and navigate an array of impossible choices.

And so the great cycle of consumption grinds on. When sales of iPhones, Oreos and Coca-Cola stagnate, corporations simply roll out new iterations—the same sugary drinks, just in fresh flavours. Meanwhile, those ethical products promising to set the system right are relegated to niche categories that can barely sustain their own sales figures.

A pragmatic approach, perhaps, is simply to make the best ethical choices we can. Even without wider systemic change, we can still push for capitalist production to become more ethical, less harmful and less oppressive.

Making ethical purchasing decisions demands considerable knowledge. We must understand the processes hidden behind every label, as well as what those labels conveniently omit. Picture having to do this every single time we stock up on household essentials or weigh up a purchase. Yet, if we can systematise our knowledge, reward the products and brands driving genuine change, penalise those that refuse to reform, persist in ethical consumption over the long term, and rally others to do the same, then wielding our wallets to reshape the system becomes a viable possibility.

This strategy echoes campaigns built on boycotts, divestment and the “cancellation” of brands. Think of the calls to boycott Shell, or the pressure mounted on Nike to pay sweatshop workers a living wage.

Yet this perspective obscures the true nature of contemporary capitalism. It operates on the assumption that holding a single corporation to account will somehow resolve everything. The reality is far more complex. From smartphones to reusable water bottles, the vast majority of items we purchase involve a network of ten to a hundred companies spread across the globe. That is how global supply chains function. That very same supply chain infrastructure supports both so-called “ethical” products and their unethical counterparts.

The world we inhabit is saturated with platforms and virtual marketplaces. From digital shelves to subsea server farms, these omnipresent marketplaces hawk computing power to industries across the globe. Amazon sells just about everything. Under Unilever’s umbrella, the portfolio spans from The Vegetarian Butcher (a plant-based brand) to frozen meat producers notorious for abysmal animal welfare and race-to-the-bottom production costs.

In this landscape, there is no genuine room for choice or taking sides. On both sides of the industry’s moral divide, the exact same technologies, operational models, workforces and marketing playbooks are pulling the strings.

The root of the problem remains production. The commodity production system has grown so immense and globalised that individual companies exist merely as stock market abstractions. Every stage of a product’s manufacturing lifecycle demands the worldwide movement of labour, industry, and capital.

This is precisely why symbolic gestures aimed at holding corporations accountable prove so futile.

When Nike faces accusations, it simply outsources garment manufacturing to another entity. Ultimately, Nike does not produce clothing itself; it merely holds the trademark. When you boycott Amazon in favour of local bookshops, those independent stores are still supplied by Amazon’s subsidiary businesses. Nearly every action we take online is routed through server farms owned by Google, Amazon, or Microsoft.

Viewed through the broader lens of financial capitalism, even these corporate giants effectively vanish, owned and steered by multi-billion-dollar investment funds. Such funds back disruptive start-ups while hedging those bets by pouring capital into traditional “exploitative” enterprises. No matter which brand consumers opt for, the net result is invariably an increased rate of return on capital.

Consequently, we are left with an abundance of largely inconsequential choices. These options do little to shift the existing system or deliver on its promised transformations, yet they undeniably wear on our psychology. They gradually drain our energy, leaving us unable to contribute meaningfully to real change. The convenient, feel-good narratives peddled to us amount to little more than a false sense of accomplishment. We must resist this trap and conserve our energy for changes that truly matter.

The illusion of choice is the lifeblood of capitalism. Not because it alters the system, but because it perpetuates it. We allow capitalism to govern every facet of our lives because it dangles this mythical promise of choice. Choose your food, choose your education, choose your flat and your job. (A nod to *Trainspotting* fans.)

Yet these choices are never genuine. They are manufactured illusions, conjured by advertising agencies. Even a sunset can be commodified, as though nature itself could be slipped into our pockets. Only when we discard this illusion of choice do the shackles of capitalism come into view. Strip away the fantasy, and much of the “freedom” we assume guides our daily lives vanishes. The stark reality is that, in the name of driving consumption, people endure profoundly meaningless labour—a state of affairs that is utterly unbearable.

Only by abandoning the practice of anti-capitalist consumption can we begin to confront the genuine questions surrounding anti-capitalist production.

Editor: Foodthink

Design: Z X