Needless Luxury

Upon revisiting Benjamin Barber’s article, Overselling Capitalism with Consumerism, both mentioned in D’s previous post, and found here, I am compelled to comment.

It seems that Mr. Barber has a bad understanding of capitalism. He says,

“Capitalism’s core virtue is that it marries altruism and self-interest. In producing goods and services that answer real consumer needs, it secures a profit for producers. Doing good for others turns out to entail doing well for yourself.” (emphasis mine)

I am at a loss for where Barber found this understanding. I suspect it is the caricature of capitalism against which he can be most easily argue, but then again, how hard is it to knock down a straw man? I suppose by real consumer needs Barber means the essentials: water, food, housing from the elements, clothing, and in today’s world, oil (though, this last one would probably be a begrudged admission at best). From there, it is hard to glean what else would be considered to be in this category. Of course the luxuries of life are not real consumer needs. Indeed, he writes,

“The world teems with elemental wants and is peopled by billions who are needy. They do not need iPods, but they do need potable water, not colas but inexpensive medicines, not MTV but their ABCs. They need mortgages they can afford, not funny-money easy credit.”

While it seems obvious that iPods are not a necessity of life, the line between necessity (clothing), and unneeded luxury (fashionable clothing) is blurred. What about necessity (grain) and luxury (wine)? How would Barber respond to this entry from Lieutenant Colonel Mercin Willet Gonin DSO, a contributing member of the liberation of the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp in 1945. I shall post a good portion of it for context.

“It was shortly after the British Red Cross arrived, though it may have no connection, that a very large quantity of lipstick arrived. This was not at all what we wanted, we were screaming for hundreds and thousands of other things and I don’t know who asked for lipstick. I wish so much that I could discover who did it, it was the action of genius, sheer unadulterated brilliance. I believe nothing did more for these internees than the lipstick. Women lay in bed with no sheets and no nightie but with scarlet red lips, you saw them wandering about with nothing but a blanket over their shoulders, but with scarlet red lips. I saw a woman dead on the postmortem table and clutched in her hand was a piece of lipstick. At last someone had done something to make them individuals again, they were someone, no longer merely the number tattooed on the arm. At last they could take an interest in their appearance. That lipstick started to give them back their humanity.” (This was found in Rob Bell’s new book, Sex God)

Think upon that last line. That lipstick gave them their humanity. People dying. Sick. Utterly forgotten. No longer human. And it was lipstick. A luxury. Bread would have fed them. Wool would have clothed them. Wood would have sheltered them. But lipstick gave life, human life, to the dying. Dignity to the undignified. Respect to the disrespected. Lipstick. A luxury.