Consumption is the mechanism through which the novel's order secures consent

The argument

Readers who take this view argue that the novel's society is held together by appetite. Its stability does not rest on fear, and on this reading it does not finally rest on force either; it rests on the arrangement of life so that wanting is continuous, satisfaction is immediate, and no appetite is ever left unmet long enough to turn into a question. Consent, on this account, is not extracted. It is manufactured as a by-product of consumption. Proponents argue that this is the mechanism the novel actually depicts at every level, and that it explains features the other readings leave loose. A population that is always being satisfied has no occasion to deliberate, because deliberation begins in dissatisfaction. Desire directed outward at things does not accumulate into desire directed at one's own conditions. The result is a citizenry that is not suppressed but occupied, and that polices itself through preference rather than through obedience. On this reading the novel's achievement is to show that an order can be total without ever issuing a command. They add that this locates the satire precisely. A novel aimed at the state would be a political warning, and the book is persistently uninterested in the usual furniture of political warnings: there is no struggle for power to follow and no resistance to rally behind. A novel aimed at an economy of managed appetite, by contrast, finds its target in the ordinary activity of its readers, which is what gives the satire its discomfort. Proponents conclude that consumption is not one theme among several but the mechanism on which the rest of the novel's arrangements depend.

Premises

Counter-arguments

Other readers object that an economy of managed appetite cannot be separated from the authority that arranges it, so the reading describes the visible layer of an order whose foundation is political. A second objection is that satisfaction does not reliably prevent discontent, and treating consumption as sufficient to secure consent makes a psychological assumption the novel itself does not settle. Others argue that the reading mistakes a satirical surface for a thesis: a book may mock the manners of a consuming society while its real concern lies elsewhere, in what such a society has to suppress in order to keep consuming happily.

Rejecting the premises

[Rejecting P1] Dissatisfaction is not the only source of reflection, and people question their conditions out of curiosity, boredom or conscience as readily as out of want. [Rejecting P3] Self-regulation through preference still presupposes someone arranging which preferences are available, which makes the mechanism dependent on an authority rather than an alternative to one. [Rejecting C] Identifying the mechanism of consent does not identify the target of the satire, since a novel can expose how consent is obtained while being chiefly concerned with what that consent costs.