Morality and Consumer Capitalism: Ambivalence and Resistance around the Commodity

In contemporary societies, commoditization has revealed its profound ambivalence. Since the end of World War II, waves of consumer activism—from civil rights boycotts in the 1960s to anti-apartheid mobilizations in the 1980s, from campaigns against sweatshop labor in the 1990s and 2000s to current actions addressing climate change, data privacy, social justice, and war—have demonstrated that consumption is deeply embedded in political and moral life. Far from being neutral or natural, consumer practices actively shape and reinforce values, subjectivities, and institutional arrangements within capitalist markets. Commodities do not exist outside politics: consumer capitalism is simultaneously framed as a domain of individual freedom and criticized as a generator of structural inequalities. The transformation of everyday goods into arenas of geopolitical, ethical, and environmental contestation illustrates the extent to which daily life is entangled with the commodity form. By examining the processes of commoditization alongside their critiques through a discussion of Skotnicki's last book on the "sympthetic consumer", this paper highlights the persistent tension between market logics and moral-political commitments, showing how consumption operates as both a vehicle of domination and a potential site of resistance.