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

In his new book CONSUMED: How Markets Corrupt Children, Infantilize Adults, and Swallow Citizens Whole, political scientist Benjamin Barber offers a vivid portrayal of the way that a consumerist mentality has superseded the public good.

With a combination of vast evidence and sharp insight, Barber explains howAmerican society is being transformed by the triumph of consumerism, and the potentially devastating consequences this transformation has already had on democracy.

Tracing the economic and intellectual history of capitalism, Barber argues that in the late 18th century, capitalism brought the promise of economic parity. During the two centuries following its ascendancy, the free market provided essential goods that met the public's needs. In recent decades, however, most of the critical public infrastructure needs like housing, education, roads and health care, had been met and people shifted their attention to non-essential desires instead.

In CONSUMED, Barber argues that the rise in consumerism has created a dangerous mentality that values personal choice over the public good, thereby infantilizing otherwise mature adults and turning children into permanent shoppers. Divided by their conflicting impulses as consumers and as citizens, individuals are increasingly drawn to a behavior Barber terms "civic schizophrenia."

The only solution, Barber argues, is "a transformation of capitalism back into a needs-satisfying economic machine, and a transformation of democracy back into the sovereign guarantor of all domains private, the market domain included." The only way to do this, and also save capitalism from itself, is to democratize globalization.

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