Consumerist ideology

The arrogance of the intellectual class is particularly aggravating when it is disguised as "critical" thought. Roland Barthes is by far not the only one who indulged in "demystification" - analysing myths of the "ruling classes" so that the myths themselves will lose their power to captivate and indoctrinate. Some intellectuals have transferred this "critical" impulse to the analysis of consumer society: they teach us that consumption is giving us illusionary satisfaction, they preach that the needs promoted by advertising and served by consumption are false needs, yet they can say hardly anything about what is to be done. Their political programme is as devoid of substance as the grandiose phrases they employ and just as revolutionary as the semi-erudite followers that duplicate their jargon of arrogance. This is because the impulse is not critical at all, it is self serving idle banter of a self righteous elite.

This banter is based on two crucial assumptions, both of them dead wrong. The first is that all people - of course excluding the intellectuals - are dumb. They are being exploited and this exploitation is being effectively covered up with a bit of sweet talk. When Marx wrote in the first part of Capital: "they are doing it, but they do not know it," it was not meant to denigrate those who do not know, it was a critique of political economy - yes, of intellectuals - for failing to come up with an adequate theory. People do not know that when trading goods they are implicitly judging the amount of labour needed to produce those goods because intellectuals have failed miserably in their task to produce an adequate theory of value and an explanation of how value is created. Marx did not want to show the proletariat the blatantly obvious, namely that they are being exploited. He wanted to analyse the not at all obvious, namely the structural logic of capitalism and its implications for the specific political form proletarian class struggle must take to be successful. For this end he was employing resources that the proletariat did not have access to: economic theory, philosophical methodology and statistical data. When intellectuals today tell us that advertisement tells lies, an experience everyone can make first hand, they must assume that everyone save them is lacking in intellect. They forget that they are distinguished from the "common man" merely by access to intellectual productive forces, not their inherent genius.

The second assumption is that the happiness consumerism provides is merely illusory. I for myself think that having a heated apartment during winter, owning a car (with air conditioning), being able to order affordable books from the internet, enjoy music on a quality stereo or rip through singletrack on a mountain bike strong enough to handle hits from rocks, roots and 4 foot drops to flat yet efficient enough for a cross-country ride lasting a few hours, are very real pleasures. When Marcuse was writing of false needs, he did not mean illusory satisfactions, imposed on the people by an omnipotent ideological apparatus. He was talking of needs that are not working towards lasting happiness. Working hard to be rich and enjoy the things consumer society has to offer has very real benefits, yet it precludes working towards a form of society in which lasting happiness of all people could be achieved and in this respect can consumer society be thought of as fostering "false" needs.

The term "fordism" applies to an age in which the proletariat was given its share - albeit a small one - of the pleasures of consumerism. The key was that capitalists discovered that the working classes are not only employees, but that they are also consumers (a paradox Marx noted already in his Grundrisse) and that paying them higher wages could be beneficial, since it would increase the buying power of consumers. The problem is not that the market offers illusory satisfactions, it is that the satisfactions of private life have taken on the task of compensating for the frustrations of working life. That expectations regarding sexual relationships are becoming ever more demanding while relationships are becoming ever more ephemeral, not being able to live up to expectations, is one symptom of this process. That advertising has abandoned presenting characteristics of products in favour of presenting the happiness ensuing from their use is another. In the realm of production we are not able to meaningfully contribute to a meaningful world, therefore we seek to compensate for that lack in private life. Talcott Parsons, a radical conservative, glimpsed a fragment of this process when he wrote that the role of the wife is an "expressive" one: creating a soothing environment in which the bread winner can relax. Advertisement is fulfilling very real needs, but these needs can be thought of as false ones, because they do not question the nature of the productive forces and the unhappiness their organisation creates. Instead of revolutionising productive relations, which could bring lasting happiness to all, we are compensating for our frustrations by consumption. The promise of happiness that advertisement makes touches upon a real need, yet it is not through consumption that this need could be fully satisfied.