Consumed: Benjamin Barber on Bill Moyers Journal
Bill Moyers recently sat down with author and political theorist Benjamin Barber to discuss his belief that American capitalism threatens to destroy American democracy. Barber develops this thesis in his book CONSUMED: How Markets Corrupt Children, Infantilize Adults, and Swallow Citizens Whole. The interview provides many launching points for constructive dialogue but, as a Christian, I am drawn to one in particular.
BENJAMIN BARBER: . . . I was called on Black Friday by a lot of radio and TV stations.
BILL MOYERS: Black Friday, the day after Thanksgiving [when so many people go shopping].
BENJAMIN BARBER: “Tell us what's going on? What’s wrong with American consumers?” Which is kind of what you and I have been talking about. But the trouble is we’re looking the wrong way. It’s not what’s wrong with American consumers, it’s what’s wrong with American capitalism, American advertisers, American marketers? We’re not asking for it. It’s what I call push capitalism. It’s supply side. They’ve got to sell all this stuff, and they have to figure out how to get us to want it. So they take adults and they infantilize them. They dumb them down. They get us to want things.
As a Christian, I agree that we ought to remain sensitively aware of the evil caused by social structures (economic, political, legal, etc.) as distinct from evil caused directly by individuals. Ron Sider’s Rich Christians in an Age of Hunger was instrumental in leading me toward this conclusion. But I believe also that we would err grievously if we were to disregard the evil within each of us, as we devote more attention to addressing structural evil. To the extent Benjamin Barber urges us to ignore our own corrupt nature, I believe he leads us astray, away from a comprehensive answer to the social ills he describes.
