Consumer Society and Capitalism: Features, Effects, and Critique

Introduction: Consumer Society and Its Origins

Consumer society, which evolves out of capitalism, has its advantages as well as its disadvantages. Even with its disadvantages, consumer society has now become an accepted form of modern life.

Under the pressure of corporate politics, the commercialization of culture, and the influence of mass media, the conventional literary values of Western society are deteriorating. For the public in general, the mixing and transformative experiences of culture have been replaced by the joint viewing experience and by participation in consumer trends (Cronk, "Consumerism and the New Capitalism"). George Orwell described consumer society as the air we breathe. High worker output and high general levels of consumption typify the efficiently organized societies of the late twentieth century. Though this prosperity is associated with genuine benefits such as raised levels of education and health care, it is also linked with much extended work hours, increased lose-lose social rivalry, uneven communities, economic disparity, and environmental degradation. Extreme and irregular consumption is responsible for both local and global unsustainability ("The Consumer Society").

John Benson, in The Rise of Consumer Society in Britain, identifies consumer societies as those in which choice and recognition are readily available, in which social value is defined in terms of buying power and material assets, and in which there is a desire, above all, for that which is novel, current, exciting, and fashionable. For years, studies on the history of consumerism had been tracing the origins back to the nineteenth century as the starting point of a culture of consumption that fits Benson's narrative. For these societies to survive, there must be an adequate portion of the population with sufficient money to buy goods beyond their daily requirements; there must be productive forces capable of making sufficient goods available and enabling new policies of marketing and selling; and there must also be a tendency among people to invest social meanings and feelings in the acquisition of goods. History informs us that industrialization prepared the ground for a consumer culture to expand — through flexible markets, large production lines, the growth of shopping, publicity, and promotion (Slater, Consumer Culture and Modernity).

Characteristics of a Consumer Society

The following are the defining qualities of the consumer society. Its characteristics are shaped mainly around objects, as things carry significance. People measure their lives by wealth and the possession of things. People are convinced that to spend is the definitive road to individual happiness, social status, and national success. Advertising, packaging, and marketing create artificial needs that are treated as real, because the economic machine has made people feel lesser and insufficient. People must be dissatisfied with what they have — and, by extension, with who they are — in order to keep the economic machine running. The significance of one's life thus becomes located in purchase, possession, and consumption.

Market values saturate every facet of daily life in a consumer society. Marketplaces are portrayed as abstract, stripped of culture, social relations, and any social-historical context. Consumers are positioned at the center of the good society as individuals who freely and rationally exercise choices through market mechanisms, shaping society through the power they exercise as buyers (McGregor, "Consumerism as a Source of Structural Violence").

Capitalism as the Engine of Consumerism

Capitalism and consumerism have become worldwide phenomena as entrepreneurs seek new markets to sell their goods and people are drawn by the returns and pleasures of consumption ("Global Capitalism Has Developed a Planetary Consumer Culture Based Upon Exploitation and Exclusion"). In the culture of capitalism, the maintenance of continuous growth and the cycles of production and consumption are essential. Capitalism is an inevitable result of an open market (Goldman, "Consumer Society and its Discontents"). The formation of a society of growth and the characteristics of capitalism marked the creation of a new phase in a continuous worldwide process of historical development, which took shape from the fifteenth to the early nineteenth century. The formation of the consumer — the human type that defines this phase — soon followed the emergence of two other historically significant groups: the capitalists and the laborers (Robbins, 2005, p. 4).

Each part of life becomes a product, something to be acquired and sold, whether it is a computer, the latest automobile, sporting or technological skills, or our capacity to work. In essence, capitalism is generalized commodity production — the transformation of all life into a thing, something to be owned or sold (Livergood, "The Wall Street-Treasury Complex as Counterpart to the Military-Industrial Complex"). Gans argues that the market is not a single entity but the combined result of the personal choices of all of its members. In capitalism, rivalry between companies for global markets requires that they continuously produce new and better ways to create things at reduced costs (Goldman, "Consumer Society and its Discontents").

In a consumer society such as the United States, workers must buy and sell to survive. The viewpoint of the U.S. government is that, in order to keep the economy engaged despite individual and ecological consequences, consumer society must be treated as a matter of national policy. This assumption runs deep. Broadcast news programs present reviews of shoppers' willingness to spend as though they were events of national importance when they report on retail districts during the holiday season. In the mid-1990s, when recession struck the United States, everyone from the President downward began urging loyal Americans to spend (Thein, 1992, p. 105).

Conclusion: Reforming Rather Than Rejecting Consumer Society

We have shifted from a work-based to a consumer-based society in which people are recognized more through their consumption and less so by their profession and general nationality. This consumer-based society integrates its own culture — one with many broadly diverse and differing values compared to the work ethic and civic culture it is replacing. But a consumer society is also fast-paced, based on around-the-clock livelihood, even though people were not physically designed for this speed. To argue against a consumer society is to argue against a mass society. And to argue against a mass society is to challenge the legitimacy of the modern world as such. In practical terms, we should not abolish our consumer society, but we should work to correct its wrongs.