Not the automobile is repressive, not the television set is repressive, not the household gadgets are repressive, but the automobile, the television, the gadgets which, produced in accordance with the requirements of profitable exchange, have become part and parcel of the people’s own existence, own “actualization.”
Thus they have to buy part and parcel of their own existence on the market; this existence is the realization of capital. – Herbert Marcuse
Capitalism, if it must survive, needs essentially two things – an unending market to dump goods, and people who are docile enough to allow this. Consumerism caters to both. It transforms man from an active creative agent to a passive spectator – in the great drama of his own life.
Work Hard and Party Harder! Reads the title of the consumerist manifesto. This, in complete contradistinction to the spontaneous and natural self-expression, embedded in creative formulations of human life.
On one side of the aisle, you have instinctive life – Life that the Irish playwright and poet – Oscar Wilde, calls ‘flowerlike’.
Whose growth is natural. Whose pleasure lies in self-expression. Which finds joy in self-development. Which does not vie for material possessions. Which values what it is, than what it has. Which shall, writes, Oscar Wilde, ‘…have nothing, And yet it will have everything.’
Such a life, demands a drastic re-arrangement of labor. Man must be freed from the fetters of economic dependence. Only then, shall he be able to create himself.
On the other side of the aisle, lie present realities. A corpse cloaked in a silken shroud. Where the only natural time afforded, is the time when one does not work. One is either a chattel or a drudge. Legally free, the only liberty he enjoys is the choice between slavery and starvation. This is the glittering world of corporate capitalism.
‘You have bread coupons, where you do not have actual bread’, laments Albert Camus. Nothing can be a fairer depiction of the consumerist culture. The freedom and creative impulse it robs is supplanted by the artificial need of cheap, and not so cheap, consumables.
Its architecture marked by imposing buildings, housing multi-nationals, camouflages the forceful luxury to follow orders inside narrow cubicles. Scintillating shopping malls, where 80% of the people can’t afford 90% of the things – yet, successfully showcase what unnecessary luxuries the capitalist world offers; if you just push a little harder, against your instincts.
‘Be thyself’ – this supreme adage – only a minuscule bourgeoisie can afford (also, only in semblance). For the rest, the motto of their lives, is an ugly adulteration of the Descartian idiom – ‘I shop, therefore I am.’
Marcuse is proficient in underlining the problem. The problem is not of cheap and not so cheap consumables – but, the cost at which they come. Not the MRP stamped on them – The cost, in terms of the life hours that are dedicated to acquiring them.
That beyond the socially necessary labor, must have been utilized in acquiring various joys of life. The dispersion of labor from more socially necessary work, to producing superfluous consumables; which makes access to pizza, easier than access to a life-saving drug.
And, most of all, the paralysis of human ingenuity and thought, by what Marcuse calls as, ‘socially engineered arrest of consciousnesses’.
Oscar Wilde rightly underscores this consumerist theme – as one, whose aim is gain, and not growth. Consumerism leads to such decadence, that man eyes everything from its price. Value is subsumed in commodities. Everything is for sale! What Marx termed as Alienation – Consumerism, as a socially coercive form of Capitalism – controls not only the body, but also the soul.
The entire marketing arena is designed to make you wish things, which the capitalist world has to sell. Badgering from media, movies, popular culture, fashion and trends virtually create a biological need for commodities. People trample over each other; seeing the other person as sheer competition – in order to able themselves, in consuming more. At what cost? His impulses, proclivities, leisure, and creativity. Man measures himself by the things he possesses.
He sees himself from the prism of the cooperate houses. He allows himself to be defined by business interests. He has volunteered his soul to a global profiteer.
Worst of all, the charade of progress, that consumerism creates, not only reduces human freedom, but also, to paraphrase Marcuse – the longing for such a freedom. Man is intoxicated by consumables.
Most of them, he cannot even afford; on the crumbs doled out by the bourgeoisie. But just the appearance of it, is enough to intoxicate him into submission – Guy Debord in his ‘Society of the Spectacle’, perfectly summarizes this tragic irony.
The apparent affluence already led to the ‘obvious degradation of being into having’ and now ‘leads to a generalized sliding of having into appearing’.
In consumerist culture, value is replaced by price and being by having (now, appearing). Brandishing local traditions by corporate houses, may fit as an apt example – Celebrating local culture, folklore, rural and simple forms of lifestyle.
Why? So that one can sell it, in order not to live it! From culture to humans – consumerism puts everything on SALE. It values man, not as an end in itself, but as a means to an end. Self-Expression, Self-Development means nothing than the desire to consume more. Consumerism is soul-murder!
Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed in this article are the personal opinions of the author.
The facts, analysis, assumptions and perspective appearing in the article do not reflect the views of GK.