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The term consumer society refers to modern capitalist societies that are organized around increasing levels of consumption. The key features generally include a culture dominated by fashion, advertising, and mass marketing; aspirations, lifestyles, and identities tied to conspicuous consumption; and a lack of traditional moral restraints on individual desires. While some scholars see the emergence of consumer societies as part of the natural trajectory of capitalist development, most who use the term critique what they see as the irrationality and wastefulness of consumer capitalism.

Criticisms Of The Consumer Society

The paradox of affluence—the belief that accumulating more consumer goods does not make us better off—is one of the more prominent criticisms of a consumer society. Juliet Schor and Robert Frank depict a society caught in an endless cycle of emulation, in which attempts to raise our social status through increasing displays of wealth are constantly frustrated by our neighbors’ efforts to match us. Consumption becomes a no-win situation, like trying to move forward by running on a treadmill. A study by Richard Easterlin, showing the residents of wealthy countries report being no happier than those from poorer countries, is frequently cited to provide empirical support for this position. More recently, some commentators have linked social pressures to increase consumption standards (even in the face of stagnant wages) to the explosion of personal debt that precipitated the global economic crisis of 2008.

The emulation perspective draws on Thorstein Veblen, an influential American social critic of the early twentieth century. Veblen dismissed the notion that optimizing individuals make consumer choices, and that these choices determine what capitalist firms produce, which economists call consumer sovereignty. He maintained that the bulk of what capitalist societies produced did not serve human needs but instead fueled “predatory” emulation. John Kenneth Galbraith adds to the critique by arguing that the advertising and marketing practices of large corporations largely determine consumer choices.

For environmentalists, ever-growing consumption creates ever-higher levels of pollution, waste, and resource depletion— to the point that continuing down this path becomes both unsustainable and immoral. Many religious traditions have long been critical of the morality of consumer societies in which secular, materialist values of pleasure seeking and profligacy crowd out traditional values of restraint, spirituality, and charity. The effects of advertising and consumer culture on the family, particularly children who are subjected to thousands of messages promoting consumption and instant gratification every day, have also traditionally been areas of concern. These criticisms have inspired a small but growing number of anticonsumerist rebels to reject the consumer society—to “get off the treadmill”—and embrace voluntary simplicity.

More radical critics paint a darker picture. German philosopher-sociologists Max Horkheimer and Theodor Adorno, seeking to understand why workers in capitalist nations were not revolutionary, found one answer in the ideological functions of consumer culture. In capitalist societies, the culture industry indoctrinates and manipulates consumers; creates false needs; and produces passive, alienated individuals who are incapable of critical thought or resistance. Taking the criticism to the next level, French sociologist Jean Baudrillard argues that consumer culture has imploded into every aspect of life to the extent that there are no longer true needs to be alienated from or manipulated.

Reactions

Theories of the consumer society have come under criticism from both the right and the left. For libertarians, these perspectives are elitist and paternalistic for asserting that consumers make choices that are not in their interest (i.e., if consumer goods do not make people happy, why do they buy them?), and moralistic for assuming that a simple life is superior to other freely chosen lifestyles. American sociologist Michael Schudson defends advertising from charges of manipulation by pointing out that many advertising campaigns are unsuccessful. These critics point to another paradox: If we are all manipulated by the forces of the consumer society, then how is it that an enlightened few have escaped its grasp, and can see how the rest of us are manipulated?

While the left largely accepts the critique of consumer capitalism, many are uncomfortable with what they see as the essentially conservative (or even puritanical) nature of perspectives that advocate simplicity and frugality. Others fear that the radical theories are fatalistic and disempowering, leaving little space for opposing the consumer society or constructing an alternative. Some feminists argue that the depiction of consumers is gendered—since women have historically been associated with consumption and have been stereotyped as irrational and easily manipulated.

Bibliography:

Baudrillard, Jean. “Consumer Society.” In Jean Baudrillard: Selected Writings, edited by Mark Poster. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1988.
Durning, Alan. How Much Is Enough? The Consumer Society and the Future of the Earth. New York: W.W. Norton, 1992.
Easterlin, Richard. “Does Economic Growth Improve the Human Lot?” In Nations and Household in Economic Growth, edited by P. David and M. Reder. New York: Academic Press, 1974.
Frank, Robert. Luxury Fever: Why Money Fails to Satisfy in an Era of Excess. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2000.
Galbraith, John Kenneth. The Affluent Society. New York: Mentor, 1958.
Horkheimer, Max and Theodor Adorno. “The Culture Industry: Enlightenment as Mass Deception.” In Dialectic of Enlightenment, translated by John Cumming. New York: Continuum, 1987.
Schor, Juliet. The Overspent American: Upscaling, Downshifting, and the New Consumer. New York: Basic Books, 1998.
Schudson, Michael. Advertising, The Uneasy Persuasion: Its Dubious Impact on American Life. New York: Basic Books, 1984.
Veblen,Thorstein. The Theory of the Leisure Class. New York: Penguin Books, 1967.