The argument goes like this: since the customer is king, the customer is also responsible. Consumer power equals divine right. Nothing else (the state, a company) can interfere with consumer power. The customer can therefore act against child labour, environmental pollution and other forms of un-ethical behaviour by just not buying the products. The principle of exchange value is the only criterium and only judge. Therefore the company that sells 'bad' products is not responsible as long as people buy their stuff. The state is not justified in taking action against bad companies as long as customers just buy the products. This constellation makes shopping in to the most political activity imaginable.
A current example is an ad campagin by the 'Voedingscentrum' (centre for nourishment), a state sponsored institution (Postbus 51). The slogan says: you pay so you determine ('jij betaalt het dus jij bepaalt het'). On internet fora there's quite some discussion on the effectiveness and use of thus campaign. Of course there is the critique in the name of boundless freedom. The state should shut upo and not interfere with the so-called bad habits of the souvereign individual (the divine right theory of teh customer-king). There is the usual critique that the money of the taxpayer should not be spend in this fashion. Another sort of critique argues against the divine right of the customer-king. The individual consumer has no authority, cannot be an agent of change. Therefore the responsability rests in the hands of the state.
One critque offers an excellent examples of a reified consciousness. Reification, a concept developed by Lukacs and very important in Adorno's thinking, seems hard to grasp when put solely in theoretical terms, but it's everywhere around is. To put it simple: the reification of consciousness means that a contingent, historical reality (say feudalism, state bureaucracy, monotheism, the principle of supply and demand, free market, communism) is taken as an objective law. An example: one critic of the campaign that states that the one that pays for the food, has the power to determine how the food is produced, claims that these sort of campaigns are false on the assumption that 'the customer goes for cheap. That is a natural law'. Here we see the concept of supply and demand that certainly has some value but is surely not a natural law (although economist might think this) taken as an objective law that determines the choice of the customer. To be more precise, this reification of consiousness denies a choice since this natural law has to be followd, otherwise it is not a natural law. The reified consciousness leaves therefore no opening for change. The subjective consciousness blocks in its reified state any option to break away from this natural law. The consequence is that there is no individual responsibility left. Curiously enough, the same critic puts the responsibility in the hands of the state. He advises customers to buy cheap meat that is cheap because the treatment of animals is really bad. This should wake up the government to take responsibality and make an ethical choice since the individual is not able to make an ethical choice because of the rule of the natural law of cheapness.
The reflex reaction to this rule of state against the individual shows how reified our consciousness is. The free market philosophy denies the state the right to interfere in the 'free' choice of the individual. Since the individual is ruled by the principle of exchange value (big piles of meat for the least amount of money) we can again see the omnipresence of the exchange principle.
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