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Lesson 7: Consumerism
Social Problems
Robert Wonser
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Consumerism is Capitalism
Capitalism - the economic system that
is based on the private for-profit
operation of industry.
Consumerism propels the insatiable
belief that we need what we do not
have to fuel capitalism.
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Consumerism
 “By the advent of the 80’s, Americans believed in
consumption as salvation, as the only way they
knew: shop ‘til you drop, spend ’til the end, buy
‘til you die. Buying was the new time religion,
and the shopping mall [or Wal-Mart] its cathedral
of consumption.” – Kowinski 1993
 A fundamental frame of reference for relating to
oneself, to others, to the environment as a whole
 The principle socializing force behind this way of
being in the world is television and advertising
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An anticorporate
advertisement
from the critical
magazine
Adbusters.
Why do activists
compare global
corporations
to psychopaths?
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Cultural Hegemony and Consumerism
 Ideas propelled by the culture industry:
 Last season’s fashions are so last season
 planned obsolescence
 Shopping completes us
 Average adult – 48 new pieces of
clothing a year, child – 70 new toys
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But, it’s new!
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Cultural Hegemony and Consumerism
 We can all live like celebrities
 No longer the Jones’, we evaluate our consumption
relative to reference groups that live financially
beyond our own means.
 Americans carry $2.56 trillion in consumer debt, up 22%
since 2000
 Average household’s credit card debt is $8,565 up 15%
from 2000
 Ironically, this doesn’t make us any happier by only
highlighting existing disparities between the middle
and upper classes.
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Cultural Hegemony and Consumerism
 Our self-worth is determined by our looks
and cultural norms of sexual attractiveness
 Airbrushed images of perfected bodies
normalize an unattainable expectation
of beauty.
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Cultural Hegemony and Consumerism
 Brands matter
 Connote status
 McDonald’s coffee beats Starbuck in unbiased
Consumer Reports taste tests.
 Ramones t-shirts have outsold their cds and records
10 to 1
 Cool hunters
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Commodities
 Commodity a product of materialist orientation
with a focus on productive capacity of actors.
 Upon interacting with others and nature, humans
produce the objects necessary to survive, which
are then used by oneself or immediate others 
commodities use value. But under capitalism this
becomes working to produce exchange value
where objects aren’t used immediately but later
exchanged for money or other objects.
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Use vs Exchange Values
 Use value tied to human needs and the objects
to satisfy those needs; difficult to compare;
they’re qualitatively different.
 In the process of exchange though commodities
are compared to one another, which are
quantitatively different.
 Exchange value is separate from the physical
property of the object.
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Fetishism of Commodities
 Commodities are products of human labor but
can be separated from the needs and
purposes of the creator (becoming exchange
values). 
 EV floats free from commodity and seems to
exist independently. In capitalism this the
commodity and market do become real
independent phenomena and take on
independent, mystical external reality.
 This is the fetishism of commodities
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Fetishism of Commodities
 For Marx, true value comes from the fact that
labor produces it and someone needs it, its value
represents social relations.
 Capitalism distorts this relationship to one of
relations between commodities, hiding the
exploitative social relations that built it.
 Also a process of reification (or“thingification”)
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Class Status and Conspicuous
Consumption
 Conspicuous consumption status
displays that show off one’s
wealth through the flagrant
consumption of goods and
services, particularly those
considered wasteful or otherwise
lacking in obvious utility
 Upper classes distinctly avoid
associations with working class;
this reverse is not true.
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Our new drug of choice
 We find reward through purchasing power (the
paycheck and salary) rather than labor power (the
artistic ability to create and make, and the
humanistic ability to contribute and serve)
 TV amplifies our confusion of reality
 Helps make our needs and wants ambiguous
 Advertising is it’s only true enduring program
 The primary role today of most media is to deliver
advertisements
 As McLuhan put it,“the medium is the message”
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Consuming = Identity Construction
 What we acquire and own is tightly bound to
our personal identity
 Competitive acquisition has long been an
American institution.
 Comparisons we make are no longer restricted
to those in our own general earnings category,
today we are more likely to be making
comparisons with or choose as our “reference
group” people whose incomes are three, four,
or five times his or her own.
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How Bad is it?
 27% of all households making more than $100,000
a year say they cannot afford to buy everything
they really need.
 Nearly 20% say they“spend nearly all their
income on the basic necessities of life”
 In the 50-100k range, 39% and ⅓ feel this way
respectively.
 Overall, half the nation’s richest country say they
cannot afford everything they need! Which half
are we talking about?
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Intensification of Competitive Consumption
 At a minimum: average persons spending
increased 30% between 1979-1995.
 Economic trend: diverging income distribution.
Sociological trend: upward shift in consumer
aspirations and the vertical stretching out of
reference groups.
 Growing income inequality yet more of us
aspiring to ‘make it.’
 In short, 4/5ths of Americans were relegated to
earning even less than the people they looked
up to, who were now earning and spending
more.
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Ah, plastic…
 Debtors pay an average of $1,000 a year in
interest fees alone.
 Credit card link is Pavlovian:
 Adding the MC logo causes people to spend
more.
 Credit card tips tend to be higher than cash
tips.