Is it hypocritical for socialists to use iPhones and buy stuff on Temu?

Anti-capitalists are often accused of a double standard: you hate the system, but want to enjoy its benefits. The latest to employ this supposed gotcha is none other than Meg O’Neill, CEO of Woodside Petroleum. “It’s been a fascinating journey to watch the discussion, particularly amongst young people who have this very ideological, almost zealous view of, you know, ‘fossil fuel bad, renewables good’, that are happily plugging in their devices, ordering things from Shein and Temu”, she said, before lamenting “that human impact and the consumer’s role in driving energy demand and emissions absolutely is a missing space in the conversation”.

That a fossil-fuel CEO on a $7.5 million salary can criticise the avarice of young people with mobile phones and who buy things online shows that “lifestylism”—a set of politics that starts from analysing individuals’ consumption choices—is all about letting the capitalist class off the hook.

While O’Neill complains about young people charging their phones, Woodside is celebrating a 40-year extension of the North West Shelf gas project, which will release 4.4 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide over its lifetime. That’s more than 87 million tonnes a year, twice the annual emissions of Portugal. The consumption choices of individuals don’t even register when compared to the consequences of decisions made by big corporations.

For a generation that grew up during the millennium drought of the early 2000s, water conservation was a way of life. Super-soakers were out, three-minute shower timers were in. Memories of these household standards were still fresh in young people’s minds when our government granted Adani an unlimited water licence for its Carmichael coal mine in 2017. The mine uses at least 12.5 billion litres of water annually.

While capitalists pocket massive profits from these destructive decisions, they want to force a sense of collective responsibility onto the rest of us. It’s why oil giant BP hired an advertising firm to popularise the term “carbon footprint” in the mid-2000s: in order to invoke a sense of individual responsibility for climate change. Corporations can now cash in on the spurious guilt they help generate—by giving you the opportunity to pay them to “carbon offset” your flight.

Socialists reject the idea that individual consumers are to blame for environmental destruction. We argue that responsibility for the direction of society should be placed on those who control and run it. Capitalists, not consumers, are the ones who decide what is produced, how it is made and how it is distributed—with profit, not the wellbeing of the planet, as their overriding concern. It is their decisions that have the biggest impact on the world around us, and which determine the conditions under which the rest of us live and get what we need, and the choices available to us.

Just think of how the world is clogged with trash because companies like Coca-Cola realised decades ago they could increase profits by replacing refillable bottles with single-use plastics. Or how millions of iPhones end up in landfill every year, leaking toxic chemicals into the soil, because they are designed to be difficult to repair and be made obsolete with the next release.

While many people still attempt to live as ethically as possible within the confines of the system, the operations of capitalism restrict the majority from having the agency and resources to make real decisions about their lives.

The layout of our cities and the demands of working life mean it’s impossible for most people to ditch their car. The average person spends $20 per day getting to work, and average commute times in Sydney and Melbourne are more than one hour. Thirty years ago, mobile phones were used only by high-powered business executives, but now a smartphone is a practical requirement for most work and study. Most people are busy focusing on how to keep up with mortgage payments and making sure their kids have regular meals. Only a minority of affluent and time-rich people have the resources to reverse-engineer the supply chains behind their Monday night spaghetti bolognaise.

All the while, ordinary people are up against huge marketing machines dedicated to generating desire for products that we would be better off without. Large advertising firms hire professional psychologists who are experts in manipulative techniques to overcome what they refer to as “sales resistance”. And then they have the gall to blame the people impacted by these relentless marketing campaigns for the damage the business’s production and transport practices do to the planet. No similar resources are dedicated to raising awareness about the harmful impacts of capitalist production and distribution techniques, which might push behaviour in a different direction and generate resentment towards predatory companies.

Worse still, fossil fuel companies have been burying research about the implications of climate change since the late 1970s. In the decades since the secret got out, they’ve dedicated vast resources to defending the unsustainable status quo, from fighting against emissions regulations to lobbying governments for harsher criminalisation of climate protesters. But they still criticise consumers for not acting on the information that they try to hide or discredit.

The world needs to be transformed. But a focus on “voting with your dollar” and influencing the direction of capitalism by buying ethical products starts from where we are most powerless and frequently ends up appearing more like a marketing campaign for a different brand of harmful products than a strategy to change anything. Too often, the “ethical consumption” industry only helps give the status quo a progressive and socially aware image while taking attention away from the sort of actions that could bring real change. Tesla is a case in point.

For years, owning a Tesla was the ultimate symbol of ethical capitalism, supposed to frame its buyer as a pioneer of a green capitalist future. Now owning a Tesla signifies something different. There’s a cottage industry of articles about rich people experiencing “buyer’s remorse” after shelling out $80,000 for a vehicle now labelled the “swasticar”.

The problem isn’t just that Tesla buyers who thought they were funding the green revolution were really funding MAGA reaction. It’s also that Tesla’s business model relies on the same destructive and exploitative practices as all capitalist production.

Tesla’s reported carbon emissions are 50 million tonnes a year and growing. That’s roughly equivalent to the combined emissions of Ghana and Sudan, home to 85 million people.

Tesla cars require rare earth minerals: 520 grams are used in every Tesla Model Y motor. Seventy percent of rare earth minerals are mined at Bayan Obu in Inner Mongolia. Areas surrounding the mine and associated processing facilities are poisoned by lakes of toxic industrial by-product, leaking chemicals and radioactive elements into the soil. These places are now known as “cancer villages”. Residents experience high rates of respiratory diseases, cancer and other health issues, as well as impoverishment because pollution makes farming unsafe in the surrounding areas.

There is a trail of brutal exploitation at every stage of the supply chain, from the use of child labour to mine cobalt in the Democratic Republic of Congo, to brutal conditions in the factories where cars are assembled. Tesla workers on average receive $20 an hour less in wages than Ford and GM workers. Workers complain of wage theft, constant safety hazards and injuries, and aggressive company union-busting.

This is why ethical consumption is so difficult. Modern marketing constricts “ethical” options, which are so often revealed to be complete bullshit. So even if we’re all trying to make the right choices, the likelihood is we’re being scammed. Is it any wonder people give up and just buy stuff on Temu?

As long as we live under capitalism, we can’t purchase our way out of injustice. The majority of us are forced through economic compulsion to participate in the system, by buying products necessary to reproduce life and engage with society, and by selling our labour to bosses. But it’s capitalists who dictate the terms and reap all of the benefits of exploitation, while the social costs are imposed on workers.

This is why the Woodside CEO’s comments are so insulting. In her diatribe against anti-fossil fuel “zealots”’, O’Neill complained that “most people hit a switch and expect the lights to come on”, suggesting that, unlike her, ordinary people are unable to comprehend the complexities of energy production.

It’s perfectly reasonable for people to expect the lights to come on when they hit a switch, and the technology to do this sustainably has existed for decades. That this still comes at the expense of planetary survival really exposes the irrationality of capitalism, not the hypocrisy of ordinary people who want to be able to see things when it gets dark.

Under capitalism, it’s workers who have to face the consequences of irrational and destructive decisions made outside of our control. It’s the blue-collar suburbs of Melbourne’s west, blanketed in diesel emissions from trucking and smoke from factory fires, that face disproportionately high rates of respiratory illness, heart disease and asthma, not Toorak or South Yarra.

Of course, the Woodside CEO isn’t truly concerned about the environmental and social impacts of fossil fuels. Her comments are entirely cynical, but there’s a real strain of “progressive” politics that says the world’s problems can be ameliorated by individual action. Lifestyle politics accepts that capitalism is the best that humanity is collectively capable of, and the best we can do is nudge the market in the right direction while leaving society in the hands of the bosses.

Socialists, on the other hand, recognise that workers don’t just hit a switch; they are the ones who make the lights come on. It’s the collective labour of workers that powers everything, assembles the iPhones and ships the parcels. Socialists don’t want to reject this productive capacity. We want to democratically direct this vast knowledge and social wealth for the good of humanity, not just for the profit of a tiny minority.

But achieving this change is made harder by lifestylist politics. To be able to use their collective power to transform social conditions, workers need to see themselves as a class with common interests against their bosses, not as consumers who identify with particular brands—whether they’re the ones like Temu that promise unlimited cheap crap, or the brands like Tesla that market the lie that they’re saving the world. When these companies are viewed as what they are—giant, exploitative workplaces—the need for change and the source of the problem become much clearer.

Socialists have genuine solutions to the problems raised by lifestylist critiques of capitalism. A socialist society would organise a rapid transition to renewable energy sources. It would redirect research and development away from industries like marketing and weapons that thrive on human misery, toward improving transport, health and infrastructure. It would put an end to the production of endless disposable plastic products that poison the atmosphere and clog the oceans.

That's what being a socialist is about. Pro-capitalist lifestylism is a pathetic attempt by the real criminals to make us feel like hypocrites for even suggesting this. Thankfully, much like Tesla’s latest Model Y, almost no-one’s buying it.