Marketplace of Virtue Criticism of Ethical Consumerism

Analyses how ethical consumerism, far from amending our capitalist form of life, abets it

• Provides a moral and political questioning of practices that are becoming increasingly popular
• Stands at the juncture of moral and social philosophies, yet it is also bolstered by more empirical works on present-day capitalism
• Argues that the idea of a 'fair' price and 'responsible' purchasing practices are mechanisms for reinforcing the commensurability on which the market is based
• Seeks to update the Adornian idea that ‘there is no right life in a wrong world' in the contemporary context of the multiple injunctions engage in ethical consumerism

Estelle Ferrarese shows us that ethical consumerism collaborates with the very order it seeks to break. Today’s spread of consumer practices advocating ‘fair’ prices or ‘responsible’ purchases is grounded in a supposed critique of capitalism at the level of everyday life. This book runs counter to the prevailing view.

Ferrarese argues that ethical consumerism conceals the fact that the market perpetually undoes any of the moral standards that are injected into it. Arguments for ethical consumerism incorrectly suppose that capitalism can be reduced to psychological mechanisms, such as an apparently predatory temperament, mechanisms that can then be curbed by the upholding of virtues.

Practices of ethical consumerism invest individual intention with absolute mastery over the world, with a boundless ability to reshape it. And given ethical consumerism’s want to put a figure on everything – from damages to virtuous behaviour – it ends up contributing to the very form imposed on the world by the market, namely generalised commensurability.