Citizen Or Consumer? How Democracies Tilted From Moral To Material Values

-Analysis-

HAMBURG — This article is meant to sow confusion. Because confusion, sometimes, is better than any neat certainty. Confusion can be the starting point for a new kind of understanding. It opens things up.

More precisely, this is about the political image of humanity — the underlying idea of human nature that shapes current political discourse and standard government practice in Western democracies. Clearly, something has gone seriously off track.

For decades, the dominant view of human nature held by the political center, the mainstream, or whatever one wants to call the milieu running Western democracies, went something like this: Society is made up of individuals primarily driven by personal gain, usually in material terms. Everything else — values, democracy, community, patriotism — comes after material benefit, which is often labeled “existential,” as if anything less were a direct threat to survival.

“First comes food, then comes morality” is how the poet and communist Bertolt Brecht once captured the essence of this mindset. This view doesn’t only live on the far left. It can be found in thinkers like Thomas Hobbes, Bernard Mandeville and Adam Smith — and in almost every politician I’ve spoken with over the past few decades.

More wealth, less interest in values

Oddly enough, this thinking has persisted right into the present, even though most people are well-fed, have a roof over their heads, access to healthcare and education, and own a refrigerator, a TV, a cell phone, a car and take one or more private trips each year.

Then something happened that the political center still cannot make sense of — though right-wing populists clearly can. The more material wealth people had, the less inclined they were to stand up for values, democracy or social responsibility. One might say: First came food, then more food and even more food — while morality slipped away.

A majority is willing to turn its back on democratic values.

When Donald Trump was elected U.S. president for a second time — the poster child of egoism and ruthlessness — it became obvious: in the richest, most powerful, and oldest democracy in history, a majority was willing to turn its back on democratic values. And this wasn’t because of some textbook reason from the 20th century: no devastating economic crisis, no mass unemployment, no famine, no major war. They were simply walking away from democracy.

The political center, especially the Biden-Harris administration, tried to counter the seemingly spontaneous rise of right-wing populism by boosting the economy, hoping to satisfy material self-interest. The economy did well. But egoism flourished right along with it. That might explain why most efforts to invoke values were quietly shelved by the Democrats, or reserved for Sunday speeches, reduced mostly to generic anti-fascism.

Price is what matters

A case in point was how the Green New Deal was rebranded as the Inflation Reduction Act, or IRA. Officially, it aimed to fight inflation, with lower CO₂ emissions as a side benefit, if that. Climate policy had to avoid even the faintest suggestion that older, wealthier generations should sacrifice anything for their children, grandchildren, nieces or nephews. In fact, it wasn’t supposed to look like climate policy at all. Instead, it had to look like something you could consume right away without leaving a trace. Under Trump, even that half-hearted climate policy was pushed aside entirely.

And why? Because that’s just how people are? Former German Chancellor Olaf Scholz took the same route. His policies were supposed to win people over with material results. But they didn’t — despite the fact that those results, like former U.S. President Joe Biden’s, were not bad at all.

Something troubling has surfaced in the United States, something that completely contradicts the centrist idea of human nature: a dozen eggs for $11 under Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris discredits their economic policies and, eventually, their entire government. The same price under Trump? Somehow not so bad. And now things get really bizarre: While Biden, Harris, and Scholz have bent over backward not to ask anything of people, Trump can turn around and declare that kids don’t need 30 dolls, three will do, and they’ve got too many pencils anyway. He can say his economic policy will require sacrifices at first, but it’ll pay off eventually. In other words: The dark lord of collective egoism has hijacked the Democrats’ idealism. Not that they were using it much anymore.

Shaking up materialist dogma

Now, desperate believers in democratic materialism are hoping Trump will soon crash and burn because of his lousy economic policies. But they’re no longer sure, and that alone is something. Maybe this doubt could actually lead somewhere.

Maybe it’s just a basic flaw in logic. Could it be that once people are reasonably comfortable — plus, plus, plus — they start to care about something other than getting even more? Or even about more than just keeping what they have?

Maybe the real issue isn’t the price of eggs, but whether those $11 feel like an insult.

It might just be that people whose basic needs are largely met turn their political attention elsewhere: identity, dignity, grievance, recognition, attention and, yes, entertainment. Panama, Canada, Greenland; the presidents of Ukraine and South Africa on the spot in the Oval Office; top-tier TV. Maybe the real issue isn’t the price of eggs, but whether those $11 feel like an insult, more proof that Democrats don’t care about regular folks.

Morality first, then the omelet? Who knows. What’s frustrating is that right-wing populists have figured out how to harness this post-material surplus for politics. The political center, meanwhile, has no clue. Why is that?

Voters as customers

Western democracies have clearly become consumer democracies in two senses. First, the nonstop stream of goods and services is now seen as a kind of human right, a baseline condition that must always be met. Second, citizens have become consumers of democracy itself, expecting “politics” to deliver ready-made solutions to problems they themselves helped create.

In real life, people — and we all know them — are far more complicated, contradictory and frankly less awful than the one-dimensional characters you find in political debates. Sadly, politicians almost never encounter this complexity. Even though they travel the country during campaigns and meet thousands of people, they don’t actually meet them.

Journalists who tag along on these tours often watch ordinary people transform into nagging, whining, demanding creatures the moment a politician appears. And as soon as the politician leaves, they turn back into regular folks. In the end, voters just echo whatever is shouted into them. Sure, there are appeals to solidarity and humanity. But only as window dressing. In this way, politics keeps creating the very kind of citizen who resists being governed. If that doesn’t change, the political center might soon collapse under the weight of its own hidden contempt for people — leaving the other side’s proud contempt to triumph.

Shifts in communication

Dealing with these flat, it’s-my-turn citizens must be frustrating and maybe even a little scary for politicians. After all— and this is one of the strangest things about the materialist, egoist worldview — most politicians would never have gone into politics if they truly believed people were the way they think they are.

Selfish, self-centered, materialistic: That’s the assumed default in political thinking, the unspoken baseline. And yet, it’s a type of person with whom no politician would want to share a beer. Isn’t that weird? And wouldn’t that obvious contradiction be an opportunity, if only politicians tried connecting with the neighborly, drill-lending side of people?

In any case: If this view of humanity has led to political failure (Scholz) or seems on the brink of doing so (Germany’s new chancellor, Friedrich Merz), and if a closer look reveals so many red flags, wouldn’t it make sense to try out some different public ideas of what people are like? Something Christian, maybe. Or based on solidarity. But that might be too daring for the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) and Social Democratic Party (SPD), the two parties of today’s governing coalition.

Still, the new Chancellor has made a shift. In his first big speech to the Bundestag, Merz pointedly declared that the state is “all of us,” and that every demand made of the state is, by definition, a demand made of every citizen. In an interview with ZEIT, he gave up the term “delivery” — a word he himself had used often.

One could call this Merz’s Habeck pivot; as Vice Chancellor, Green politician Robert Habeck tried to radically rethink how the government communicates with citizens. He failed, mostly because Merz’s CDU and its Bavarian sister party CSU attacked him for it. At least Merz won’t face that kind of opposition. Probably. Hopefully. Who knows? It’s still all a bit confusing.