Banal illiberalism and its implications

I first used this term in 2023 when taking my Master's in European Policy at the University of Amsterdam. I was taking a class on illiberal ideologies and discourse within Europe and, when it came time to choose the topics for our end-of-block essays, I unfailingly chose the fast fashion industry to be my topic. Despite being the topic of my Bachelor's thesis and several other papers, the topic never fails to capture my interest and provide a springboard to talk about many of the social and human rights issues that plague the globalised economy today. My professor loved the concept behind the paper and the term that I used and encouraged me to continue this line of research, so when I had a chance to write an article for my study association magazine, I couldn't resist reworking my earlier essay into something that was a bit shorter and catchier to read. 

Please see the article below! 

The freedom to exploit others?

How the free market made modern slavery an intrinsic part of the neoliberal world order

By Emma Bates 

Sitting in my break room at an unnamed luxury fashion company, I realised that what I had believed to be the exception was, in truth, the rule. “Oh, I don’t worry about toxins too much; I only wear it once before I throw it away.” my coworker responds, laughing, when I ask whether he’s concerned about toxins in the products he’s just boasted about buying from the Chinese company SHEIN for only a few euros. I felt that I was, for the first time, understanding how the modern global economy had distorted Adam Smith’s invisible hand of the market; not only were my coworker’s actions not in the public interest - they weren’t in his, either. Seeing this caused me to re-examine a question I had asked before: when we order things from amorphous Asian-based e-commerce retailers, are the items we pay for truly the only things that come neatly packaged? 

SHEIN and its cohort represent the evolution of direct-to-consumer e-commerce companies that began with AliExpress: websites which aggregate thousands of sellers that ship directly from factories in China, cutting out the usual middlemen that are used by Amazon and other more traditional retailers. Sales for these companies have reached record levels in recent years and, with no signs of slowing down, their influence in our homes, our smartphone usage, and our ways of consuming are incalculably vast. To understand better how these platforms became so pervasive, we need to take a step back to the ideologies that drove their creation. 

The story of their rise is a deceptively two-sided coin, one born out of the Enlightenment moral philosophy of liberalism: declarative neoliberalism and covert illiberalism. Since the 1970s, neoliberalism - the promotion of free-market capitalism with few regulations - has led the dismantling of trade unions in developed countries, the globalisation of the international economy, and the outsourcing of many of the productive industries that once drove the GDPs of countries in the global north. Illiberalism, in contrast to anti-liberalism, is not an open rebellion against liberal western values, but is instead the subversion of liberalism’s tenets of freedom, liberty, and human rights. E-commerce companies find their success in the shadow that neoliberalism, in its pursuit of economic optimisation, casts over human rights; by capitalising upon underregulated labour markets in China and low trade barriers with the EU, NA, and Oceania, they make an unconscious place for illiberal values in even the strongest bastions of liberalism.

Just as banal nationalism (small, often unconscious expressions of nationalism in daily life) influences the behaviour and mentality of citizens, the consequences of what I term “banal illiberalism” should not be overlooked. Neoliberal ideologies and policies emphasise the right of consumers to freely engage with the market to maximise their own welfare, but does not consider the external influences they may be exposed to in pursuit of material satisfaction. The human rights concerns associated with, for example, SHEIN, are well-documented, but this did not stop a group of influencers, flown out and pampered by the company, from ebulliently declaring that they saw excellent working conditions, paying little heed to the fact that the factories they toured were as artificial as many of the fakes that SHEIN produces - the reality is a network of contracted, poorly regulated factories with workers making mere pennies a day. 

The products also pose risks after they have left the factory: journalist and researcher Alden Wicker has shown that dangerous and prohibited levels of chromium, lead, and other chemicals are present in clothing imports to North America and the EU. The ubiquitous justification online for consuming SHEIN products is that it caters to underprivileged and underrepresented groups: the impoverished, the plus-sized, the disabled, and those who dress alternatively - in other words, to expand our freedoms and increase our enjoyment of the ones we have. However, at least one of these claims is disproven in a study of SHEIN consumers by Sollwedel and Bak that illustrates the irrelevance of economic status - income has little to do with the rate or amount of consumption. This rang true for me, as I saw the coworkers that made more than a living wage (and often still living with their parents by choice) declaring SHEIN their only option. Even more tellingly, the research shows that the average SHEIN customer checks their awareness at the door and makes their purchases in wilful ignorance of the circumstances of their manufacture. Regarding the matter with this in mind, the companies somewhat lose their banality; if customers can turn a blind eye to forced labour, environmental pollution, and a myriad of other concerns overseas, what may go unnoticed at home?

When we, as consumers, utilising the market and economic freedom that has been granted to us, are unwittingly discussing how far our dollar can stretch at the cost of human safety and dignity, the question arises of whether this international apathy is related to the turn to the right that Europe has experienced in past election cycles, to the spread of endemic selfishness spreading across society, the NIMBYism that says my wants above all else, even my own health. When political regimes turn away from liberalism, their impacts are often felt upon those marginalised in society. Without empathy, we risk repeating mistakes of the past; without empathy, we cannot see the tide coming until it laps at our door. The social and ideological impacts of hyper-fast e-commerce companies have not yet been studied in great depth, but it offers a concerning glimpse of how our future relations to one another may look. The debate until today has been how to improve the conditions under which goods are produced. What we must now ask ourselves is this: do we want to?