The Problem With “No Ethical Consumption Under Capitalism”

If there were an award for the most overplayed argument against veganism, “there is no ethical consumption under capitalism” would be a serious contender. It sounds clever. It sounds radical. It sounds like the sort of sentence that should end an argument.

Mostly, it just ends thinking.

The basic idea is simple enough. Capitalism is exploitative. Workers are underpaid, corporations abuse their power, supply chains are riddled with injustice and almost nobody can participate in the economy without contributing to something unpleasant somewhere. Fine. But somehow, from this perfectly reasonable observation, some people make an extraordinary leap: because perfect ethical purity is impossible, deliberately breeding, exploiting and killing sentient beings for products we do not need becomes ethically irrelevant.

Veganism Is Not Shopping

The first problem is that this argument fundamentally misunderstands veganism. Veganism is not a consumer preference in the same category as choosing one brand of coffee over another. It is an ethical rejection of the idea that sentient beings should be treated as commodities and resources in the first place. A cow is not an unethical product. She is someone who has been turned into one.

Animal products are not simply ordinary commodities that happen to have a troubling supply chain attached to them. The exploitation is intrinsic to what they are. You cannot produce cows’ milk or chicken ehg without using their reproductive systems. You cannot produce meat without killing someone.

There is no version of these industries where the fundamental ethical problem disappears while the product remains the same.

Imperfect Does Not Mean Identical

The second problem is false equivalence. A plant-based burger and a beef burger may both exist within capitalism. That does not make them ethically interchangeable. The fact that harm exists somewhere in both supply chains tells us almost nothing about whether the harms are equal.

Imagine applying this logic anywhere else. One company underpays workers. Another uses trafficked labour. Both participate in capitalism. Are we therefore forbidden from saying one situation is worse? Of course not.

But this is effectively what the argument demands when applied to animal exploitation. If nothing can be completely ethical, we are apparently supposed to abandon comparisons altogether.

That is an appeal to futility.

If you cannot eliminate every harm, reduce none. If you cannot live completely outside exploitation, stop worrying about the exploitation you can avoid. If perfection is impossible, anything goes.

Convenient.

Nobody Actually Believes This Consistently

The argument becomes even stranger when you look at how people behave in virtually every other political context.

Boycotts have been used against apartheid. Campaigners boycott companies connected to environmental destruction, worker exploitation, fossil fuels and human rights abuses. People move money away from banks funding projects they oppose. They support co-operatives, Fairtrade initiatives and solidarity campaigns. Nobody responds to a boycott of an especially abusive corporation by saying, “Well, every company exists under capitalism, so you might as well buy from whichever one you fancy.” At least, nobody expecting to be taken seriously. We understand perfectly well that systemic change and individual action can coexist.

A corporation can hold vastly more power than one shopper while that shopper still has choices. A government can carry responsibility while citizens still have responsibilities. A system can be unjust without rendering every action within that system morally equivalent.

Strangely, this nuance often evaporates the moment animals enter the conversation.

The Slogan Was Supposed to Criticise Capitalism

There is a legitimate idea buried underneath all this. Individual consumers should not be made solely responsible for problems created by enormous corporations and economic systems. Buying the right products cannot purify anyone of participation in capitalism. Ethical consumption alone will not dismantle structural exploitation.

Agreed.

But “individual action cannot solve everything” is very different from “individual actions mean nothing”.

The first encourages structural change.

The second encourages apathy.

And if “no ethical consumption under capitalism” means that purchasing decisions have no ethical significance whatsoever, then the slogan destroys the logic behind boycotts, divestment, solidarity purchasing and countless other forms of political action. More importantly, it turns a critique of corporate power into a personal permission slip.

Follow the Logic

There is also a darker problem.

Once unavoidable exploitation somewhere in a system becomes justification for knowingly participating in avoidable exploitation, where exactly does that reasoning stop?

If sweatshop labour exists throughout global supply chains, does that mean we need not care whether a particular company uses it? If trafficking exists under capitalism, does the impossibility of completely removing ourselves from exploitative systems make knowingly supporting trafficking morally neutral?

Obviously not.

We recognise degrees of responsibility because ethics becomes almost meaningless without them. The existence of injustice does not erase our responsibility to oppose injustice where we reasonably can. It makes that responsibility more important.

No Ethical Purity Required

Veganism does not require believing that buying plants transforms someone into a perfectly ethical consumer. There is exploitation in plant agriculture. Workers can be abused. Corporations can behave appallingly. Environmental damage can occur. Vegans should oppose those things too. But none of this explains why we should add another entirely unnecessary form of exploitation on top.

“No ethical consumption under capitalism” should be a warning against complacency. It should remind us that changing what we buy is not the endpoint of political action. Instead, it is too often wielded as an excuse to do nothing about exploitation that happens to benefit the person making the argument.

You cannot consume your way to moral purity. Fine. But that was never a licence to consume whoever you want.

- This article was inspired by a piece written by our friend Retro.