The society of commodity
By Efor
The best method to make one passively subordinated by an abstract illusion is dependency and addiction. The delusion of consumerism is not just a false belief but an addiction that rests upon desire. The idea was relatively simple. If people were addicted to factory products, it was less likely for them to express their discontent for the working conditions in these factories, or wonder about the life of the people who work in the factory, or even question the nature of labor/work itself. As Stuart Ewen1 claims, consumerism, “the mass participation in the values of the mass-induced market was not a natural, historical development, but an aggressive device of corporate survival.” The fake prosperity that was achieved through consumerism, the encirclement of social life by the spectacle resulted in the distraction of people’s attention from the unpleasantness caused by labor/work. “To those who cannot change their whole lives or occupations, even a new line in a dress is often a relief”, Helen Woodward argued.
Thus, human societies slumped from “being” (personality, cultivation of the mind etc) to “having” and eventually glided to “showing” (the main characteristic of the world of spectacle). So, human identity is not any more defined and measured according to what every individual actually is or what he/she does, not even by what he/she owns. It is defined by what the person presents that he/she is orowns. Happiness (a term used ad nauseam in our days by conservatives like David Cameron) has become a quantitative indicator, dependent upon the goods a person is able to own and the social status attached to his/her presentation to others. In an anonymous and alienated society, appearance is important and the social status that can be earned through a certain occupation is presented to strangers via consumerism, a procedure we could call “commercialization of our self”. Our self as a product which is described on a sheet of paper we call Curriculum Vitae.
Politics itself has become vocational marketing and party candidates are advertised like products of mass consumption. “It’s not the consumers’ job to know what they want” the founder of Apple, Steve Jobs, used to say. If we transfer the above quote to the political realm, “it’s not a citizen’s job to interfere with politics to know what he/she wants”, something also suggested by the English philosopher Thomas Hobbes 400 years ago, which means that citizens are incapable to govern themselves, because their state of nature is characterized by the greed of domination. Thus, as the only solution against civil war or devastation, Hobbes suggests a social contract, a sort of “agreement” between individuals (the dominated) and a central government (the Sovereign), which will control the executive and legislature power, and by means of coercion will deter anyone from interfering with politics, by locking him/her in his/her private realm. To the contrary, Hannah Arendt, having based almost all her intellectual work on the Aristotelian philosophy (man is a political animal) regards that the public ( political) realm is the only one where man can actually gain his freedom3.
Aristotle’s definition for citizen was this: “Who is a citizen? A citizen is everyone capable to govern and be governed.” There are thirty thousand million citizens in Europe. Why are they all not competent to govern? Because the mainstream political ideology aims exactly at preventing citizens from learning how to govern and be governed (to know both sides of power). Consequently, cultivates the logic that governance should be assigned to the “experts”. This indicates that there’s an anti-political education, proportional to the ultra-individualist imaginary, which leads to passiveness and, hence, consumerism. Mass societies produce individuals who instead of undertaking political responsibilities and initiatives, become addicted to following and voting for the political choices someone else has prepared for them, exactly as they don’t get to decide what kind of goods they want to produce, how to produce them or in which way they want to distribute them.
The end of consumerism
In a world where spectacle prevails, it’s not society that establishes the principles of this spectacle, neither a secret group of speculators, as supporters of conspiracy theories would claim. It’s the concept for continuous profit that leads institutions, values and society itself at a direction which serves an increasing production, combined with an ever growing consumption. It’s precisely this ‘consumption bubble’, through the way the financial system operates (loans, credit cards etc.), that resulted in the current economic “crisis”. After consumers were stuffed with excessive consumer desires, after the list of products that would make them “happy” expanded, it suddenly became apparent that these artificial needs could not be served by the banking system. Thus, the growth of plastic trash, a growth that cares for nothing else but itself, is drawing the curtains for, at least, most of the people.
Economic growth liberated societies from physical stress that required their direct struggle for survival, but, with doing so, it subjugated them to their liberator. Economy transformed the world, but it transformed it solely into a world of economy. The abundance of merchandise, namely of the merchandise relation, can be nothing more but the augmented survival, which hasn’t stopped incorporating neediness. A typical example is the following contradiction: while technological automation and development could have eliminated or, at least, reduced the need for labor, in fact it created a new sector, the tertiary (service industry), modifying at the same time the slightly increased “leisure time” into a motive for alienation (since the enjoyment of leisure requires consumer goods…).
“The imaginary of our time is the imaginary of the unlimited expansion and accumulation of worthless things… Meaning what? A television in every room, a computer in every room and so on. It’s upon this imaginary that the system relies. And it is precisely this that must be destroyed”, Cornelius Castoriadis2 says. The moment that society comprehends that it has ended up dependent on economy, we realize that quite the opposite has happened. Nowadays, society and economy are opponents in a battle of domination. Societies across the world are faced with a big dilemma: the pseudo-usage of life through commodity or the real life. The antidote of this so much discussed ‘crisis’ is not an economic ‘solution’, but a social/political one and it’s that we are asked to give as a society of the world, as people who have the duty to form a substantially political world.
References
(1) Stuart Ewen, Captains of Consciousness: Advertising and the Social Roots of the Consumer Culture.
(2) Cornelius Castoriadis, We are Responsible for our History
(3) Arendt Hannah. On Revolution. Penguin Books, Second Edition, 1973
(1) Stuart Ewen, Captains of Consciousness: Advertising and the Social Roots of the Consumer Culture.
(2) Cornelius Castoriadis, We are Responsible for our History
(3) Arendt Hannah. On Revolution. Penguin Books, Second Edition, 1973
Other Resources
Guy Debord, Society of the Spectacle
Selling the Work Ethic: From Puritan Pulpit to Corporate
Hobbes, Thomas. Leviathan. Oxford University Press, Second Edition, 1909.
Writer: Efor, Editor: Michael Theodosiadis, Translator: Annitagrn,Michael Theodosiadis.
Guy Debord, Society of the Spectacle
Selling the Work Ethic: From Puritan Pulpit to Corporate
Hobbes, Thomas. Leviathan. Oxford University Press, Second Edition, 1909.
Writer: Efor, Editor: Michael Theodosiadis, Translator: Annitagrn,Michael Theodosiadis.
Shortlink: http://eagainst.com/?p=47323
http://eagainst.com/articles/commodity/