Consumption, Conflict, and Class: The Political Economy of Modern War

The relationship between consumption and conflict has become one of the most under-explored yet defining features of the global economy. In a world where material satisfaction is both a marker of social success and an engine of economic growth, the demand for resources, energy and commodities has come to shape international relations as much as ideology once did. The wars of the twentieth century were fought over national survival, ideology and empire. The wars of the twenty-first are increasingly driven by the economics of consumption: access to rare minerals, control of supply chains, and the preservation of lifestyles that depend upon ceaseless production and acquisition. Yet the theoretical foundations for understanding these dynamics were laid long ago by Karl Marx, who saw conflict as the inevitable product of class divisions within the capitalist mode of production. In comparing Marx’s ideas with the modern phenomenon of consumer-driven conflict, one sees both continuity and transformation: class struggle has been replaced, in part, by consumption struggle—a global contest to sustain a way of life built on finite resources.

Consumption and the Global Economy of Violence

Modern consumerism operates as both an ideology and a system of material compulsion. States, corporations, and individuals alike are bound by the need to sustain growth, and growth in the modern economy is inextricably tied to consumption. The smartphone, the electric car and the computer all require lithium, cobalt, and rare earth elements—materials concentrated in politically unstable or environmentally vulnerable regions. The consequence is a series of extractive conflicts: in the Democratic Republic of Congo, armed groups control cobalt mines whose output fuels the world’s technology supply chains; in Myanmar, rare earth extraction sustains military and criminal networks; in Latin America, lithium extraction stirs tension between local populations and multinational corporations; in Ukraine, an aggressive neighbour invaded in large part to seize her iron, steal and coal resources in the Donbas. Consumption, in short, does not merely reflect global inequality; it sustains and reproduces it through violence.

The logic of consumption also shapes geopolitical strategy. China’s Belt and Road Initiative, America’s protection of global sea lanes, and Russia’s wars over energy corridors all serve, ultimately, to guarantee flows of goods and commodities that sustain domestic consumption. When such flows are interrupted—whether by sanctions, blockades or environmental collapse—social instability threatens those states whose legitimacy rests upon consumer prosperity. Thus, the politics of consumption blur into the politics of war: maintaining consumer satisfaction becomes a national security imperative.

Hegel’s Theory of History and Conflict

Before Marx started writing in the nineteenth century about conflict being fuelled by the forces of production, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel had sought to explain the movement of history not through economics but through the evolution of consciousness. For Hegel, conflict was an essential and even rational process through which human freedom unfolded. In his Phenomenology of Spirit (1807), he described history as the dialectical progression of the human spirit (Geist) towards self-awareness and liberty. Each historical stage contained internal contradictions that would be resolved only through struggle, leading to a higher synthesis. War, for Hegel, was not merely destructive but served to renew ethical life by preventing societies from sinking into complacent materialism. War was the crucible in which collective spirit reaffirmed itself.

Hegel’s dialectic—thesis, antithesis, synthesis—became a model for understanding how conflict drives progress. The master–slave relationship he described exemplified this: one consciousness asserts dominance, another submits, and through the struggle between them emerges a new recognition of mutual dependence. This was, in Hegel’s view, the logic of history itself: humanity moves forward through contradiction and reconciliation, not through peace or stasis.

Crucially, Hegel saw this process as idealist rather than materialist. The movement of ideas, not the structure of economic production, determined historical change. Freedom was realised when human reason came to understand itself in political and ethical institutions, culminating, he believed, in the modern state. Thus, for Hegel, conflict was ultimately a spiritual phenomenon—a necessary expression of the world spirit (Weltgeist) working itself out through time.

The Relationship Between Hegel and Marx

Marx began his intellectual life as a disciple of Hegel, but he sought to turn Hegel’s system “right side up.” Where Hegel saw history as a process of ideas achieving self-consciousness, Marx saw it as a process of material conditions shaping human thought. In Marx’s famous words, “It is not the consciousness of men that determines their being, but their social being that determines their consciousness.” He retained Hegel’s dialectical structure but replaced its metaphysical foundation with a material one: history was the dialectic of classes, not of ideas; its movement was driven by the contradictions between productive forces and relations of production.

In this transformation lay the birth of historical materialism. Marx agreed with Hegel that conflict was the engine of progress but rejected the notion that freedom could be achieved through the state (Kant's "perpetual peace") or through philosophical reconciliation. Instead freedom would emerge only through revolutionary transformation of the material basis of society. Whereas Hegel had viewed war as a manifestation of the spirit’s self-realisation, Marx saw it as an instrument of class domination—a means for the ruling classes to manage crises within the capitalist system or to expand it into new territories.

Nevertheless Marx’s inheritance from Hegel remained profound. Both men viewed history as a process of becoming, structured by contradiction and resolved through struggle. Both understood conflict not as chaos but as the logic of development. And both conceived of human progress as dialectical rather than linear. The essential divergence lay in what they believed to be the driving force of that dialectic: for Hegel, ideas; for Marx, material relations.

From Class to Consumption: The Modern Transformation

In the twenty-first century, the roles of producer and consumer have become fused in ways that complicate Marx’s dichotomy. Workers in one part of the world produce goods consumed by workers in another; globalisation has dispersed the proletariat into a network of interdependent consumers. The smartphone assembler in Shenzhen and the commuter in Berlin are bound by the same economic chain. Their apparent equality as participants in a global market masks profound inequalities of power and wealth, yet their mutual dependence on consumption reduces the visibility of class antagonism. Instead of a revolt against the bourgeoisie, the modern crisis takes the form of ecological depletion, debt dependency, and resource warfare.

Moreover the ideology of consumption has replaced that of class emancipation. Individuals now express identity through acquisition rather than solidarity. This shift has political consequences: governments gain legitimacy by delivering consumer goods rather than social justice, and populations tolerate inequality so long as their purchasing power grows. The result is a world in which maintaining access to cheap commodities—fuel, metals, food—becomes a precondition of political stability. When scarcity threatens that access, conflict follows. The wars of the Middle East over oil, or the tensions between China and the West over microchips, are not merely geopolitical struggles; they are battles for the continuance of consumption.

Comparing Hegel, Marx and the Contemporary World

In the dialectical spirit, one might say that the modern world represents a new synthesis of Hegel’s and Marx’s insights. From Hegel, it inherits the idea that conflict is a structural part of human progress. From Marx, it inherits the recognition that material conditions—economic production, ownership, and inequality—shape that conflict. Yet today’s wars are no longer purely ideological or even class-based. They are driven by the contradictions of consumer capitalism itself: the impossibility of infinite material growth on a finite planet.

Where Hegel saw war as the renewal of spirit, and Marx as the crisis of class, we now see it as the by-product of desire. Humanity wages war to preserve not only wealth or power but the illusion of abundance. Consumption has become the new world spirit: the invisible force animating global politics, uniting and dividing societies through the pursuit of comfort. The Hegelian dialectic persists—but it now unfolds between consumption and conscience, material need and moral awareness.

Conclusion

Consumerism has become the dominant form of global capitalism, and in so doing it has redefined the causes of war. Whereas Hegel viewed conflict as the rational process through which freedom evolves, and Marx interpreted it as the inevitable consequence of class exploitation, the contemporary world reveals a synthesis of both: a dialectic of desire in which humanity’s pursuit of comfort creates new forms of dependence and violence. Wars are fought not only for profit but for the preservation of lifestyles; exploitation persists not only through labour but through consumption. The philosophical continuity from Hegel to Marx to the present lies in the recognition that conflict is not an aberration but the very condition of progress. The tragedy of the modern age is that this progress now risks consuming the world that made it possible.