One of the classic refrains of the contemporary anti-war movement is the slogan “No Blood For Oil”. Critics allege that American interventionism in the Middle East is motivated by a desire to secure the petroleum resources of the region. They point to corporate greed, the incredible power and wealth of the oil industry and see this influence being used to dictate world affairs for profit. While much of this criticism hits the mark, especially with the widely reported instances of war profiteering and this summer’s drilling debate, the critique overlooks the fact that it is the American consumer that ultimately empowers this structure. We of course not only purchase gasoline, but our entire lifestyles are dependent upon the purchase of goods that are made available to us only through mass production and mass transportation. Recycled paper is driven from mill to wholesaler to retailer in a fleet of a thousand diesel-powered trucks. Barbie and Ken are made of extremely complex carbohydrate chains derived via elaborate chemical processes from petroleum.
What I seek to illustrate is not that the American consumer is to blame for our present military misadventure, as there are numerous more causally linked factors to criticize first. The fact is, however, that the consumerism of the West has a huge role in determining the fates of the rest of the world. Naomi Klein writes of the labor dumps of the free-trade zones around the world catering to brand-name companies looking to cut out costs from their manufacturing process. The use of cheap foreign labor in dubious conditions is familiar to all of us. However, not so many people in the world are employed in manufacturing. A Vietnamese woman with a sweatshop job may feel very glad that she is not a plantation worker in the Congo or a miner in Bolivia. The oppressing economics of consumerism extend far beyond the manufacture of the goods themselves to the extraction of resources and other forms of capitalist exploitation. Even while we lambast Disney for having Chinese women toil away on Mickey Mouse pyjamas, we hurl a different criticism at industrialists who pay workers cents a day to harvest rubber or dig for manganese. It is corporate fat cats we say, who subject the world’s poor to such misery. I most certainly do not buy bulk quantities of rubber or semi-obscure metals. But I do put tires on my car, I do buy sensitive electronics full of conductors and semiconductors and so on. All industry, all infrastructure is ultimately destined for the use of human beings. Perhaps not all of this constitutes consumerism, but consumerism could not occur without it.
Libraries have been written about how the drive for resources causes wars, how fragile export economies based on monocultures and other single commodities leads to cyclical poverty. The phrase “banana republic”, before it meant a line of young adult clothing, stood for the domination of the West, of corporate power over the Third World, with the likes of United Fruit having whole governments in their pocket. However, next time, before we blame a corporation for anything, especially for utilizing power and wealth, we must ask where this wealth derives from. It is not from corrupt politics or a reckless disregard for the welfare of laborers, although these certainly help the profit margin. What empowers the corporate world is us. Their revenue is the banana in your lunch bag. If we seek to end the heinous practices that lead our governments to conduct foreign relations we consider unacceptable, we have to first address our own consumption and realize that we are dependent upon that which we deplore. To end our own complicity we must reevaluate how much we truly need to consume. We should not simply ask ourselves what we truly ‘need’, or follow some utilitarian program of global good and expect this to be feasible, but we should ask the more pertinent question of how we can live and find value in our lifestyles while compromising excess and luxury in favor of a sustainable justice.
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