Consumerism as an Ideology: a Critical Theory Perspective.
This paper sets out to understand consumerism as a phenomenon of modern industrial society. Consumerism is here understood as a constitutive element of industrial capitalist economy. It is characterised fundamentally by commodification and the excessive preoccupation of society with the purchase of goods and services, spawned by the creation of unnecessary needs and excessive advertisements. Marketers entice consumers to increasingly purchase such commodities even though the need for such products may not necessarily exist. Thus consumerism can be understood ideologically as a practice in which the producers seek to dominate the consciousness of consumers, to a point where consumers are susceptible to the dominant forces of capital. Ultimately these forces threaten the autonomy of the individual, leading to the erosion of subjective individuality and authentic existence. On this basis, the paper argues that consumerism functions as an objectifying ideology of the capitalist class in bourgeois societies as it threatens and undermines individual autonomy. The paper will make use of Marcuse’s One-Dimensional Man in order to show the distortion of consciousness caused by consumer culture. Further to this, Erich Fromm’s Escape from Freedom will be drawn upon in order to provide the analysis of social conformity and show how politically passive characters are created in capitalist society. The paper will make use of critical theory as a theoretical framework within which to understand the social phenomenology of consumerism.
Source: https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=4521075
