Consumed by Consumed by Benjamin Barber

Although Consumed made many enlightening and revealing arguments about the nature of capitalist competition, Benjamin Barber’s tone and writing habits detract from the effectiveness of the book. The most obvious and frustrating writing habit Barber has is that he surrounds his few good points by repetitive and unnecessary information. Instead of utilizing the 400 page space that Consumed takes up for synthesizing his clustered and disorganized ideas, Barber chose to extend the presentation of a good and easy to understand argument through meaningless repetition. During the chapter about globalization, Barber literally repeats the same basic claim that “globalization extends the effects of privatization” more than three times within the same paragraph:

Globalization effectively outsources privatization. That is to say, it takes the ideological claim that markets could be sovereign… and globalizes it. In the international arena… the argument for market sovereignty is unopposed. On the global level, the idea of the commonweal has no traction. (Barber 162)

Unfortunately for the reader, Barber harms the effectiveness of his argument in two ways. First, there is a direct tradeoff between the space Barber devotes to making arguments and the space he devotes to synthesizing the arguments he has already made. Therefore, since Barber utilizes Consumed as more of a ideological dumping ground, Consumed lacks much of the synthesis that is needed in order to construct quality arguments. Furthermore, the sheer amount of tangential topics that Consumed creates without clear synthesis or development of each individual tangent, such as his discussion on Freudian psychoanalysis, detracts substantially from the main ideas of the book. Second, without proper synthesis, Barber appears to change his idea of a viable solution from sustaining capitalist competition and civic engagement using government intervention to promoting corporate restraint and citizen action as an indirect way to reduce infantilization. Not only will this dramatic shift in the logical progression of Barber’s argument destroy the confidence that readers have in Barber’s message, but this shift will also persuade many readers to think that Barber offers little or no solutions because the new solutions do not depend on the same ideologies, problems, or political realities that Barber has been sustaining readers with for the majority of the first and second parts. For instance, Barber engages in an early discussion of the role of government in promoting capitalism after supporting the rationality of rational capitalists like John D. Rockefeller:

The balance between [monopoly and competition] was from time to time restored, both through liberal market ideology and government intervention on behalf of competition… In response to the market’s natural contradictions… the emerging democratic state played a balancing role that kept markets in check. As capitalism’s rapid growth created wealth faster than jobs, and promoted prosperity without redistributing it justly, the democratic state… saved capitalism from itself. Egoism found itself up against a civic community willing to enforce the rights of the public. (Barber 77-78)

Barber’s discussion of the merits of the civic community and the democratic state in sustaining capitalism voice a need for a directly involved democratic community in the policy decisions of the democratic state. The solutions Barber offer tend to shy away from altering the structure of the political landscape and, instead, simply favor enlightening individuals about the nature of and disadvantages to consumerism through practices such as cultural creolization or carnivalization. Furthermore, Barber encounters two big problems with utilizing solutions that have faith in the enlightenment of individuals. First, Barber has already spent the entirety of a 400 page book condemning and poking fun at the rationality of modern individuals, who happen to be the same people that he depends on for the success of his solutions. Second, Barber’s solutions have no enforcement mechanism or actor that could actually promote change in today’s corrupt system, which is mainly because Barber chooses not to expand his idea of utilizing government to institutionalize community participation in order to create a balance within capitalism. Moreover, if Barber chose to expand on this idea, there would be a much better synthesis of the ideas presented within Consumed and that solution would be viable enough to produce change. Through the analysis of Derick W. Brinkerhoff, governments function most efficiently after they sponsor and empower deliberative spaces (such as public forums) in order to funnel public opinion and solutions directly into the government’s policy making process:

[T]he most successful cases [of governance] are where participation becomes institutionalized. This allows for… civil… input [that is] continuously feeding back into new decisions. … Circumstances change continuously and it is important that disadvantaged groups have opportunities to keep on taking part in decisions about their country’s… fiscal posture. (Brinkerhoff 698)

Therefore, Barber has made all the arguments and logical connections that are necessary (or numerous enough) to make Consumed a great book that addresses pressing issues within any democracy while also creating many viable solutions. However, the lack of synthesis and continuity that Barber provides for his ideas detracts significantly from the effectiveness of the book in creating a valid address to the complex ideas of democratic and civic legitimacy.

Works Cited

Barber, Benjamin. Consumed: How Markets Corrupt Children, Infantilize Adults, and Swallow Citizens Whole. New York: W.W. Norton and Company, 2008. Print

Brinkerhoff, Derick W., and Arthur A. Goldsmith. "How citizens participate in macroeconomic policy: International experience and implications for poverty reduction." World Development 31.4 (2003): 685-701. Print.