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["Sayan Bhattacharyya" <ok.president+marxmail@xxxxxxxxx>]

Review of:

CONSUMED
How Markets Corrupt Children, Infantilize Adults, and Swallow Citizens Whole.

By Benjamin R. Barber.

406 pp. W. W. Norton & Company.

New York Times Book Review
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By PAMELA PAUL
Published: April 8, 2007

[...]

According to Barber, global inequality has left the planet with two
kinds of potential customers: the poor of the undeveloped world, with
vast and unserved needs but not the means to fulfill them, and the
first-world rich, who have scads of disposable income but few real
needs. While an earlier capitalist economy, backed by a Protestant
ethos, was built around selling goods like timber and buckwheat that
served people's needs, today's consumerist economy sustains
profitability by creating needs, convincing us that Wiis and iPhones
are necessary. It has done so by promoting what Barber calls an ethos
of infantilization, a mind-set of "induced childishness" in which
adults pursue adolescent lifestyles, as evidenced by their tastes and
spending habits. In other words, in order to sell superfluous stuff,
the market must foster a permanent mentality of "Gimme" and "I want it
now!"

The resultant "radical consumerist society" has set capitalism and
democracy against each other, undermining both. Capitalism, Barber
writes, "seems quite literally to be consuming itself, leaving
democracy in peril and the fate of citizens uncertain." Children's
lives are reduced to shopping excursions in which their identities are
subsumed by brands — they're the Nike generation, Abercrombie kids,
iPod addicts. Meanwhile, the grown-ups have become so focused on the
private "me" sphere, they've withdrawn from the public "we." Our
political culture compounds this by elevating the private sector over
the public, encouraging Americans to believe that anything the
government can do, private enterprise can do better (for example,
prisons-for-profit are preferable to those run by the state,
mercenaries trump the Marines, and so on). Left unchecked, Barber
warns, "infantilization will undo not only democracy but capitalism
itself."

[...]

Full: <http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/08/books/Paul.t.html?ref=review>

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