By my perception (and several others including
Edward Norton and the producer,
Ross Grayson Bell himself) the film (and
the book) is not about
consumerism (although of course it certainly is an
underlying theme) or the assertion that "Violence, in the proper context, is good".
No, the greater underlying theme is that you have to break yourself apart in order to build something new. It is only when you forget the khakis and when you forget your debts, and ultimately the fears that you're not good enough that you can actually attain a new life, and one that you have indeed been sub consciously dreaming of. The film should have shocked the world into assessing who was really controlling our lives - us, or our own fears. However, most everybody saw the shallow side of the film which was the violence, the Brad Pittness, or the more "philosophical" meaning (the comment on consumerism).
"The idea of the fighting in this is not about the suggestion that violence directed outward toward other people is a solution to your frustrations," Norton says quite firmly. "It's very much a metaphor for self transforming radicalism for the idea of directing violence inward at your own presumptions. (My character) doesn't walk out of the bar and say "Can I hit you?" he says "Will you hit me?" It's this idea that you need to get shaken out of your own cocoon. The fighting is a metaphor for stripping yourself of received notions and value systems that have been applied to you that aren't your own. And freeing yourself to discover who you actually are."