The Consumer Society
From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia
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"Shower him with all earthly blessings, plunge him so deep into happiness that nothing is visible but the bubbles rising to the surface of his happiness, as if it were water; give him such economic prosperity that he will have nothing left to do but sleep, eat gingerbread, and worry about the continuance of world history." --epigraph in The Consumer Society from Notes from Underground (1864) by Fyodor Dostoevsky |
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La Société de consommation (1970, English: The Consumer Society) is a book by the French sociologist Jean Baudrillard, two years after his previous work Le Système des objets. It is with The Society of the Spectacle one of the central French texts of anti-consumerism.
It is a Marxian approach to society and a criticism of capitalism and of consumerism.
It does not praise communism. The only time the word communism is mentioned is here:
- "Thus the complementary myths of well-being and needs have a powerful ideological function of reducing, of eliminating the objective, social and historical, determinations of inequality. The whole political game of the welfare state and consumer society consists in surmounting their contradictions by increasing the volume of goods, with the prospect of an automatic equalization by quantity and a level of final equilibrium, which would be that of total well-being for all. Communist societies themselves speak in terms of equilibrium, of 'natural' individual or social needs, needs 'harmonized' and free of all social differentiation or class connotation. In this, they too drift from a political solution to a definitive solution by abundance, substituting the formal equality of goods for the social transparency of exchanges. Thus we also see the 'Revolution of Well-Being' taking over from the social and political revolution in the socialist countries.
The devil metaphor
- "Just as medieval society was balanced on God and the Devil, so ours is balanced on consumption and its denunciation. Though at least around the Devil heresies and black magic sects could organize. Our magic is white. No heresy is possible any longer in a state of affluence. It is the prophylactic whiteness of a saturated society, a society with no history and no dizzying heights, a society with no myth other than itself."
- "If the consumer society no longer produces myth, this is because it is itself its own myth. The Devil, who brought Gold and Wealth (the price of which was our soul), has been supplanted by Affluence pure and simple. And the pact with the Devil has been supplanted by the contract of Affluence."
Bibliography
Baudrillard J., Le Systeme des Objets (Gallimard). La morale des objets: fonction/signe et logique de classe «Communications № 13». La genese ideologique des besoins (Cahiers Internationaux de Sociologie V. 47, 1969). Boorstin, L’Image (Julliard). Chombart de Lauwe, Pour une sociologie des aspirations (Gonthier). Darras, Le Partage des Benefices (Editions de Minuit). Debord G., La societe du spectacle (Buchet-Chastel). Dichter, La strategic du Desir (Fayard). Enzensberger, Culture ou mise en condition (Lettres Nouvelles). Galbraith, L’ere de Vopulence (Calmann-Levy). Le Nouvel Etat Industriel (Gallimard). Jouvenel B. de, Arcadie Essai sur le Mieux-Vivre (Futuribles). Katona, La Societe de Consommation de Masse, 1969 (Editions Hommes et Techniques). Kende P., Le productivisme en question (Diogene № 65). Lagneau G., Le Faire-Valoir, 1969 (E. M. E.). Lefebvre H., Critique de la vie quotidienne (Editions de Minuit). La vie quotidienne dans le monde moderne (Gallimard). Marcuse, Eros et Civilisation. L’homme unidimensionnel (Editions de Minuit). Marcus-Steiff J., Les etudes de motivation (Herrmann). Marshall Mac Luhan, Pour comprendre les media (Editions du Seuil). Medium is Message. Marx, Introduction a la Critique de l’Economic Politique (Editions Sociales). Morin E., L’Esprit du Temps (Grasset). Packard, L’ere du gaspillage, Les absedes du standing, La persuasion clandestine, Le sexe sauvage, etc. (Calmann-Levy). Riesman, Lafoulesolitaire (Arthaud). L’abondance, a quoi bon? (Laffont.) Ruyer R., Eloge de la Societe de Consommation (Calmann-Levy). Sahlins M., La premiere societe d’abondance, octobre 1968 (Temps Modernes). Vaneghem R., Manuel de Savoir-vivrepour lesjeunes generations (Gallimard). Veblen, Theory of the Leisure Class. Revue: Arguments, Les Dijficultes du Bien-Etre, 1962. Communicationsn № 10, VacancesetTourisme, 1967. № 13, LesObjets, 1969. № 14, La Politique culturelle, 1969, et l’ensemble de la revue pour les mass-media. Diogene № 68, Communication et Culture de masse, 1969. Etudes et Conjonctures. Serie des Annales du CREDOC (Centre de recherche et de Documentation sur la Consommation). La nef, № 37, Sur la Societe de Consommation. Structure et Perspectives de la consommation europeenne (Andre Piatier — Etude sur Tenquete «221 750 000 consommateurs» organisee par Selection du Reader’s Digest).
See also
