Workers-as-consumers: Rethinking the political economy of use-value and the reproduction of capital

Abstract

The relationship between the working class and consumer culture is undoubtedly contentious and often held as problematic in Marxist critical theory, owing to the exploitative nature of the mass production that facilitates consumption. Consequently, consumption sometimes appears as a distraction from the inequality perpetuated during the accumulation of capital, and thus as a social problem with normative undertones. As I reiterate in this article, however, workers are not simultaneously consumers because they have been inundated with consumer culture and advertising, but because they are separated from the means of production and must resort to exchange to reproduce their labour-power. As a result, they seek commodities as use-values, which is altogether different from a capitalist’s desire to realise exchange-value in the sale of commodities. This article is an attempt at examining the contradictions that arise in working-class interests in consumption, in order to illustrate why the act of consumption does not necessarily engender the continuous reproduction of capital, and thus of exploitation.