Exuberance
Georges Bataille, a modern French philosopher, has proposed that "it is not necessity but its contrary, 'luxury' which presents living matter and humanity with their fundamental problems"(Accursed Share, Vol 1, "Preface" p. 12). According to him, excess, or the 'accursed share' can be disposed of either exuberantly or destructively. Obviously, his main criticism of society is that its capitalist locations of power have always depended on the latter form of dissipation for their survival and reproduction.
"Eros and Death" Rob's Fiction // Herman Melville Stoned
Social Progressivism
Perhaps a better word for what I would like to see is social revolution. There are many, and I'm thinking in particular of Guy Debord, who believe that anything short of total revolution is really only reinforcement of the status quo. Attempts at consumer activism that are not comprehensive probably fall into the category of social progressivism that Debord despises. Perhaps he's right. Right or wrong, consumer activism should be comprehensive, meaning, it should totally transform the way business does business and the way people relate to it.
Debord:
There is a school of sociology, originating in the United States, which has bgun to raise questions about the conditions of existence created by modern social development. But while this approach has been able to gather much empirical data, it is quite unable to grasp the tru nature of its chosen object, because it cannot recognize the critique immanent to that object. The sincerely reformist oreintation of this sociology has no criteria aside from morality, common sense and other such yardsticks - all utterly inadequate for dealing with the matter in hand. Because it is unaware of the negativity at the heart of its world, this mode of criticism is obliged to concentrate on describing a sort of surplus negativity that it views as a regrettable irritation, or an irrational parasitic infestation, affecting the surface of that world. An outraged goodwill of this kind, which even on its own terms can do nothing except put all the blame on the system's external consequences, can see itself as critical only by ignoring the essentially apologetic character of its assumptions and method.
--from Society of the Spectacle, p. 139