| Consumption, merely through which the needs of people’s lives can be met andachieved, is an obliged part for human to survive and develop. People prior to the20thcentury adhered to the principle of proportionality on their consumption because ofthe constraints of the relative scarcity of material products and their thrifty awareness.However, this situation has undergone tremendous change since the1920s.Consumerism has become popular and several developed capitalist countries whichare led by the U.S. have become a consumer society.The first half of this paper focus on analyzing the reasons which devote toforming the consumer society from four aspects: First is the internal logic of capital—capitalism’s demand for profit is the most fundamental factor that promote thedevelopment of consumer society evolved from production society; second is therelative excess of the commodity—profuse material products is one of the necessaryfactors for the production society to change into consumer society as they providematerial prerequisites for the formation of the consumer society; third is the inventionand application of the installment—the enthusiasm of people’s consumption ismobilized to a large extent as the payment for people’s purchase of the commodity isassigned to a number of stages to repay, which is bound to reduce the cash pressurefor people to buy the commodity; and the fourth is the driving factor of the media—media in this paper mainly refers to television, radio, newspaper, and magazines, etc.The advertising plays a prominent role in stimulating the consumptions needs of thepeople especially because of the seductive atmosphere created by its captivatingperformance techniques which meet the various psychological needs and the conveysof the information that to consume commodity is to own the significance thecommodity represents.The latter part of this paper criticizes the consumer society on two maindimensions. According to the analysis in the first half, the main idea of the criticaltheory to the consumer society of Baudrillard and Ecological Marxism have beenselected to support the argument of this paper. Baudrillard had given a wide, systemicand deep analysis about the consumer society. He criticized the current consumptionmodel under which the value of sign was over-focused and refuted media’s affect ondispelling subject fuzzy reality and simulacra boundary in the process of consumption.Ecological Marxism associates the critique of consumer society with the capitalist,criticizing the capitalism while revealing the root of consumer society, and expoundsthe way to overcome the alienation of consumption, namely developing small-scaletechnology, carrying out a steady-state economic model, spreading reasonableconsumer attitudes and changing the social regulation which is the most fundamental.These theories have actively inspired us on recognizing the consumer society andprovided us a powerful ideological weapon for our critique on the consumer society. Certainly, these theories are not perfect: Baudrillard paid too much attention to thesymbolic value of the commodity and ignored the use-value. He placed both in acompletely separate situation which made the critical theory be put in an abstract state.He also gave the symbols and codes absolute power which separated the connectionbetween the symbol system and capitalism. Ecological Marxism believes that thecapital profit-seeking is the root of all problems under the capitalist system, and thealien consumption would be overcome fundamentally only by changing the capitalistsystem and establishing socialist system; society can take people’s needs as principlefor a reasonable allocation of products and restrictions on excessive production andconsumption under the socialist system so as to truly overcome the ecologicalpredicament encountered, which is undoubtedly extremely profound.The study on theory or related of consumer society is of much importance ofenlightenment for us to have a clear understanding of the nature of the globalexpansion of capitalism and prevent the alienation of consumption from spreadingworldwide. Meanwhile, it is of great theoretical and practical significance torecognize the over-consumption phenomenon in parts of China so as to beware offalling into the consumer trap set by capitalism and build a socialist harmonioussociety. |
