why we became consumers instead of workers

Labor and capital are traditionally intertwined. Labor generates capital and capital pays for labor. During the last century of industrial development, labor and capital have been fighting each other to get their own ways and that interaction actually has resulted in progress. Workers claiming rights on one hand such as health care and vacations, and capitalists demanding productivity and efficiency on the other, and although that results in a conflict of interests, at the end, economic progress was achieved. The result of this polarization and its dynamics is our current prosper western society.

This prosperity has generated surplus. This surplus has been applied in science and technology. Technology provided alternatives to mechanical work, and consequently human labor has had to move towards the provision of services.

Capital, in the meantime, has become more mobile with globalization and the reduction of dislocation barriers, and therefore did not require being attached to local labor anymore. It can dislocate to wherever labor is cheaper or offers better conditions (tax cuts, subsidies, political stability, etc.).

So labor lost its power to claim or protest against conditions imposed by the capital. Protesting methods such as strikes and other worker defense strategies don't work anymore. If faced with too much trouble, investments are just placed somewhere else abroad. Since the nature of labor is currently services, the dislocation costs are very low, even moving a complete factory may be cost effective. The only workers who can still use traditional protest methods are public servants, because the state cannot dislocate itself abroad. Left wing parties, traditionally in charge of labor defense policies have no more weapons to fight, and become center-right parties, licking-up boots to the big capital. The ones which remain insisting in this note of defending labor are looked at as unrealistic old-fashioned communists.

The balance between capital and labor has become uneven, with capital having the better hand. Since labor cannot struggle against capital anymore, it starts giving up its hard-fought rights to be able to preserve itself. People work longer, take less vacation, accept less benefits, receive lower salaries, loose unemployment benefits, accept short term contracts and the possibility that the employer fires them easily and so on.

Now, capital may not be dependent on labor anymore, but they will always be dependent on consumers. Consumers hold now the power to act as counter-weight to capital to maintain the economic dynamic (work-money-consume). If the country has valuable resources (like oil, diamonds and gold) then work is probably not so important, but for countries that rely on manufactured goods for export, it is crucial.

It is clear that without work, consumers cannot afford the products and services provided by the capital, but capital seems not to get this. Each of the big corporations tries to make its own operation efficient and expects the others to sustain the purchase power of the consumers... someone else should give them work, I have to reduce costs, they think. This will not work in the long run.

Consumers have to take over the role of claiming rights from the capitalist, at the risk that the economic dynamics may collapse. The signs are there with the collapse of the subprime lending market, and the housing market in the US, consumers are at the end of their spending capacity.

A social minded consuming is necessary. Don't buy from businesses that don''t respect and discard workers, don't buy from businesses that don't respect the environment, don't buy from businesses that don't respect the suppliers of raw materials, don't buy from businesses that use toxic chemicals in their products and don't buy from businesses that don't offer proper solutions for disposal, mostly don't buy if you don't really need it, and when you do need it be prepared to pay the fair price.

Consumers of the world unite!