Consumer Alienation And Its Sublation

Consumption is an important part of human material production andreproduction, and the satisfaction to human's consuming demand is thebasic precondition for history and society. Consumption is one of thebasic conditions of human survival and development. The dissimilation ofconsumption is an abnormal consuming activity and psychologicalexperience caused by board position under a special way of productionwhen the social material production reaches a certain level. The FrankfurtSchool expanded the alienation analysis to consumption fields, and firstlydiscovered the fact of consumption dissimilation of capital society, andtheir theories on consumption dissimilation have drawn the everlastingattention of the following people. The Frankfurt school's theories aboutconsumption dissimilation were adopted by ecological maxim.Fundamentally speaking, the consumption dissimilation is an abnormalconsumption which deviates the normal consumption, goes against theessence of consumption, controls and manipulates the consumers and canbe very harmful. In China, the consumption dissimilation is not only atheoretical issue but also an urgent realistic issue. Discarding theconsumption dissimilation will do well to the harmony between humanand nature as well as the free development of human being.The manifestations of consumption dissimilation include theexaggerate symbol consumption, luxious consumption, and the blindingfollow-others consumption, of which the symbol consumption is the mainone. The developed production is the precondition of the consumptiondissimilation, while consumptionism is the spell leading to the outcomingof consumption dissimilation, and the labor dissimilation is the mainsocial reason. The consumption dissimilation can affect both environmentand the human being badly. The consumption dissimilation is the mainimportant reason for the environment crisis. What's more, it prevents thedevelopment, twists the idea of happiness, and causes the socialinstability. In order to discard the consumption dissimilation critically,according to Fromm, people should implement the entire reform andownership on the basis of human being, and conform to "humaneconsumption" and "healthy consumption". According to the Marxist,people must control the production scale, realize stable economy andform the new socialism. After considering way of discarding theconsumption dissimilation critically and compressively, we can start theworks in the following three aspects. Firstly, a positive and healthyconsumption ethic must be established in order to fight against the badinfluence of the consumptionism. Secondly, the relationship betweenproduction and consumption must be properly handled to avoidoverproduction and overconsumption. Finally efforts should be made to make sure the basic consumption right of the inferior people in thesociety, and to narrow the over wide gap of consumption.