The term “ethical consumerism” is, today, largely associated with individual efforts to make more conscientious choices about what products and services to buy. We might try to buy from companies that market themselves as environmentally friendly or avoid brands that we know are engaged in egregious labor abuses.

These efforts are obviously well-intentioned. But while they may have some minimal impact in pushing individual companies toward less destructive practices for public relations purposes, they do almost nothing to address the systemic problems of climate change, sweatshop labor, and the like. They allow consumers to feel better about their purchases, but efforts at shopping ethically are usually disconnected from any broader vision of social change — and from larger movements that could bring about that sort of change.

It wasn’t always this way. In the United States beginning in the Progressive Era, a movement composed largely of middle- and upper-middle-class women organized under the banner of “ethical consumption” to demand labor protections and minimum-wage laws. Their efforts initially focused on eliminating child labor and addressing the plight of low-wage women workers. But by the New Deal era, voluntary-membership consumers’ groups were fighting for protections for all workers, including collective bargaining rights.