I love fair trade.

It makes you feel good knowing that instead of opting for the requisite sweatshop-made garment, your shirt was stitched by a well-paid worker in a comfortable environment.

I know this opens me up to the obvious “Stuff White People Like” critique. But hey, I love Mos Def, too.

I’m not alone in my adoration of fair-trade items. International fair-trade sales totaled around $4 billion in 2008, according to the Fair Trade Federation. Despite that relatively diminutive figure, it’s been growing exponentially in recent years. Fair-trade sales in the United States and Canada catapulted 102 percent, according to the Fair Trade Federation Interim Report on Fair Trade.

My fellow liberals have been thoroughly blinded by this movement, however.

Last month, Time magazine opined that there is a “responsibility revolution” underway. In this paean to socially responsible consumerism, it claimed that “we are again entering a period of social change as Americans are recalibrating our sense of what it means to be a citizen, not just through voting or volunteering but also through commerce: by what we buy.” In the story, the magazine also gave a telling statistic: Nearly 40 percent of respondents bought a product because of the social or political values of the company.

As the Time story inadvertently elucidated, the perniciousness of buying socially responsible products arises when people equate an empowered citizen with so-called conscientious consumerism. As autonomous, intelligent citizens, we have a real ability to change governmental policy through actions other than buying.

Targeted consumer “buycotting” is parochial in its scope and wrongly puts a dollar sign on one’s worth. Americans need to reject this phony “consumer empowerment” and realize our inherent power as citizens.

In a paradoxical way, this ostensibly liberal movement is representative of privatization and the conservative movement. Conservatives — and acquiescent, faux liberals — have successfully framed government as an alien entity rather than an aggregation of citizens. In the spirit of Milton Friedman, they’ve equated unfettered markets with freedom. Governments are an adversary, rather than a tool for collective decision-making.

But what’s more democratic: a corporation responding to consumer concerns on the basis of profitability or a representative government responsive to engaged citizens?

What would be more effective: a law requiring colleges to sell fair-trade apparel or a prolonged effort to affect the practices of a giant corporation?

Too often, socially responsible buyers fall into an easy trap: that purchasing fair trade or other socially conscious products is essentially a “get out of jail free” card.

“I buy recycled tissue, so I don’t have to lobby my senator on global-warming issues,” the mindset goes.

I see buying fair trade as an effective bridge in a globalized world devoid of effective worker regulations. It shouldn’t devolve into a solipsistic way to assuage consciences or excuse other unethical behavior, however.

And it should never supplant our role as citizens in attempting to create a more just world.

Consumption — even if its done in a socially conscious way — should be viewed as secondary to citizen power in a democratic nation. As intelligent citizens, we should be outraged at the suggestion that our power is contingent on our affluence.

So in celebration of Fair Trade Month, go buy yourself a cup of fair-trade coffee or a bundle of bananas produced fairly.

Just don’t do it in a Hummer.