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This essay takes anti-sweatshop activism as a case-study of a labor movement that engages consumer politics with mixed results. It reviews the success of the media-honed strategies deployed to raise public concern about substandard workplace conditions in the global garment industry, and summarizes corporate efforts to redeem their tarnished image through the public relations vehicle of ‘corporate social responsibility’. The record of attention to labor abuses with the history of the consumer movement confirms the existence of a longstanding dialogue between advocacy organizations oriented to the politics of production and consumption respectively. But there is also a history of missed opportunities on the labor side to question the dominant materialist lifestyle of a consumer civilization. This shortcoming is highlighted by the rise of the anti-consumer movement, which evangelizes sweeping changes in lifestyle, trading, and modes of livelihood, and sees ethical consumption as little more than a way to gr...