Being an environmentalist and defending the consumer may seem paradoxical. But collectively advocating for consumers while criticizing consumerism allows for constraining the practices of industrialists.
In the United States, Donald Trump is attacking a federal agency, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, which is responsible for consumer protection, and Democrats are calling to save the institution. In France, it is the magazine *60 Millions de consommateurs* that the government has decided to privatize, and 107,000 people have signed a petition to defend it, supported by numerous opinion pieces, including on *Reporterre*. It’s a strange situation: here are consumers defended by environmentalists, even though they are the first to criticize consumerism. This is because the consumer is an ambiguous figure that leftist and environmentalist thinkers have criticized and defended simultaneously since the post-war period.
“The maintenance of a press activity subsidized by the state in a competitive and declining market is no longer justified,” states the report published by the Court of Auditors on March 5, which the Bayrou government relies on to justify the privatization of the magazine. *60 Millions de consommateurs*, published by the National Institute of Consumption, a public establishment created in 1966, is a magazine whose “some revelations have allowed for significant changes” by constraining the practices of industrialists, as our journalist Fabienne Loiseau recalled in her editorial.
Thus, “privatizing ‘60 Millions de consommateurs’ is a way to individualize the issues related to consumption,” observes Sophie Grosbon, a lecturer in public law at the University of Nanterre. For the researcher, the name *60 Millions de consommateurs* is not trivial: “The magazine does not address the figure of a consumer, but is aimed at consumers, at a collective project.”
And this is one of the key points to understand what is at stake in the links between consumption and ecology: considering consumption as a collective action, rather than an individual one, opens up very different perspectives.
A good part of the critiques of consumer society stop at its individual aspect. After the writer Georges Perec, who described the sad materialism of a couple from the 1960s in *Les Choses*, sociologist Henri Lefebvre observed in *La Vie quotidienne dans le monde moderne* (Gallimard, 1968) that “consumption creates nothing, not even relationships between consumers. It is only devouring. The act of consuming […] is a solitary act.”
Philosopher and journalist André Gorz wrote in *Réforme et Révolution* (Seuil, 1969) that “the neo-capitalist civilization has set up a gigantic repressive apparatus […] A suave terror urges each individual to consume.” But these critiques often reflect a “contempt from certain intellectuals who are confident they are on the right political side regarding the popular consumer,” notes sociologist Louis Pinto, author of *L’Invention du consommateur* (PUF, 2018). For him, consumer society is a “screen notion that masks the differences in practices among different social groups,” and allows for criticizing practices that are actually conditioned by social realities.
Criticizing the love for cars among the working classes and the consumption acts that go with it forgets that there are hardly any alternatives to mobility in rural or suburban areas. Louis Pinto also reminds us that “Henri Lefebvre, quick to criticize cars, relied on his students to drive him from his home to his university.”
Other thinkers have been keen to remind us that consumption is not an individual act aimed at satisfying buyers’ enjoyment, but a system that must be analyzed as a whole. Philosopher Jean Baudrillard wrote in *La Société de consommation* (Denoël, 1970) that “the truth of consumption is that it is […] a function not of the individual, but immediately and totally collective.” For Baudrillard, the messages we send to others through consumption make consumption “a system that ensures […] the integration of groups: it is therefore both a morality […] and a system of communication, a structure of exchange.”
For Sophie Grosbon, it is precisely the understanding of consumption as a collective act that is being challenged by attacks on consumer rights. The researcher, who studies the figure of the consumer in international economic law, particularly in environmental disputes brought before the World Trade Organization (WTO), observes that in this court, “the figure of the consumer tends to supplant that of the citizen.” In other words, the law evolves no longer based on public policy considerations, but on the freedom of choice that consumers would have to shape society through what they buy.
In a society with a liberal economy emphasizing individual freedom, it would be up to the consumer to vote with their credit card. However, for Sophie Grosbon, one can simultaneously affirm several things without being contradictory: first, that we refuse to let the figure of the consumer supplant that of the citizen; second, that we believe that consumers who have the financial means can be engaged; and finally, that consumer society as a whole is not compatible with ecological imperatives.
Considering consumer mobilizations through this lens allows us to notice that they have addressed two distinct issues since the 19th century: on one side, the defense of consumer rights, particularly movements against the high cost of living; on the other, “the highlighting of the duties of consumers, who are designated for the responsibility they can have as buyers,” notes Sophie Dubuisson-Quellier, research director at CNRS and specialist in environmental mobilizations in economic issues.
For example, “the National Consumers League in the United States at the turn of the 20th century developed a label to signal to consumers which textile products were not made in workshops employing women at night.”
The construction of these consumer collectives is thus part of movements that have compelled industrialists to adhere to more demanding environmental and social standards. This is, for example, what ethical consumption movements like “consom’acteurs” have tried to achieve. The Bio Consom’acteurs association was created in 2004 by the Biocoop store chain to promote organic farming among citizens: the idea of these movements is that collectively orienting consumption can exert pressure on political decision-makers to shape public policies — a transformation of the action repertoire, which shifts from boycott to Biocoop, in short.
However, it should be noted that while ethical consumption movements have succeeded in defending organic farming against repeated attacks from industrialists or in structuring supply chains that pay producers better, they have not challenged the functioning of the capitalist economy as a whole. These responsible consumer movements “have promoted a very specific vision of social change and ecology: more reformist than radical and very compatible with the existing economic structures,” observes Sophie Dubuisson-Quellier.
Responsible consumption, on the contrary, opens up new market segments, allowing for a circulation of flows of a still significant volume, but of a different nature: second-hand clothing or computer equipment, or products made while respecting slightly more demanding social and environmental responsibility standards.
Insufficient, then, to challenge the effects of overproduction of goods and services? For Louis Pinto, “a critique of consumption must today find other weapons than those provided by the eternal and somewhat ridiculous return of the alienated consumer.” In other words, being able to simultaneously hold a defense of consumers and a critique of consumerism.
