The social question is back, returned to the political agenda as a question of global (in)justice by the migration movements of recent years. The dramatically unequal global distribution of wealth and imperial mode of production and way of life underlying said distribution constitute a central source of worldwide migration. Even Angela Merkel was compelled to acknowledge as much in 2015, remarking that the globalisation which many in Germany have experienced as relative beneficiaries in one of the world’s leading export countries had now returned in the form of refugees.
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In view of the overexploitation of natural resources, the immense generation of waste, and the ongoing destruction of the planet’s ecological foundations the critique of consumerism is in vogue. On all sides there is criticism of the madness of the growth society and mass consumerism. The dominant critique has come from the social conservative and green bourgeois camps. The economist Meinhard Miegel and the social psychologist Harald Welzer, respectively, can be taken as exam- ples. Both capture the contemporary mood. In their arguments we find the elements – cultural-pessimist, neoliberal, and critical of capitalism – that name the problems, address the distress, and capture people’s desires. But they offer a limited understanding of consumption and the satisfaction of needs, because they do not consider class relations and often argue moralistically instead of politically. Consumption, however, is a class issue.[1]
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