I thought this was rather good from Julian Baggini in The
Guardian: although it does have one terrible error in it:  You
might dismiss this kind of ethical consumerism as mere gesture.
Waving my right-on debit card as a badge of honour as I pack my
Fairtrade chocolate into a canvas tote bag can look like a poor
surrogate for revolution. This is part of a knowingly superior
narrative of impotence that tells us our day-to-day choices
can't lead to meaningful political change. "The system" is
inherently corrupt and to believe we can affect it by our
choices is to buy into the very myth of consumer power that late
capitalism promotes in its own interest. It is to believe that
virtue can be bought, when the vice of the system is precisely
that it puts a price on everything, including a clear
conscience.  But this narrative is wrong. It portrays capitalism
as though it were a kind of entity with a will of its own, whose
only desire is to maximise profit. In fact capitalism is amoral,
not immoral. It doesn't care fo