As this column, Marginal Utility, will be devoted primarily to an exploration of consumerism, it seems appropriate to first explain what I mean by “consumerism”. First, though, I should probably apologize for using the term at all. As Raymond Williams, in his analysis of advertising, points out, the very word reinforces the tendency to ignore the various uses people find for the things they buy.
Calling a person a “consumer” suggests that whatever that person acquires is somehow destroyed in the process of acquisition; it is used up, “consumed”, the way a banned book may be said to be consumed in a bonfire. The term “consumer” figures a person as fundamentally wasteful, as one who takes the productivity and creativity embodied in a material object and makes it vanish. Without potential for productivity or creativity themselves, “consumers” can only be seen as passive (See Raymond Williams, “Advertising: the Magic System,” in Problems in Materialism and Culture, Verso, 1980).