The Criticism Of Modern Consumption Alienation From The Perspective Of Historical Materialism

With the deep adjustment of modern capitalism and the continuous evolution of globalization,the status of consumption in the whole social life has risen sharply,and has become an explicit factor affecting people’s existence and value pursuit.Rethinking the modernity situation of consumption and grasping the deep paradox contained in modern consumption have increasingly become a focus topic in the prospect of contemporary social theory.The most fundamental problem of modern consumption is consumption alienation.Modern consumption alienation is mainly reflected in that people do not fully demonstrate their free personality in the consumption activities to meet their own needs,but are increasingly shaped by all kinds of dissident forces.In order to fully grasp the situation of modern consumption alienation,this paper takes historical materialism as the overall perspective to grasp and reflect on this problem,so as to reveal the manifestation,root essence and complex consequences of modern consumption alienation,and explore the ideological direction of sublating consumption alienation and constructing consumption civilization.From the perspective of historical materialism,modern consumption alienation follows the materialization logic with capital as the dominant principle.Materialized logic realizes deep social control through commercial capital,mass culture and ideology.Under the control of materialized logic,people’s pursuit of consumption activities and the satisfaction of their own needs in turn lead to the loss of human nature.Consumption alienation is the product of the development of modern capitalism to a certain stage.As a living body,man must have his own needs and pursue the satisfaction of his own needs.With the development of capitalist industry and the rapid progress of modern science and technology,the relationship between consumption and production,as well as the function and social status of consumption have undergone historic changes.The transformation of modern capitalist production mechanism leads to the modernity transformation of consumption.Under the manipulation of capital logic,the transformation of modern capitalist production mechanism from "single piece production" to "Ford production" and then to "Post-Ford production" has made production a powerful support for consumption,so that Baudrillard called this society "consumer society".The transformation of the center of modern production consumption structure is not a simple transformation of the relationship between production and consumption,but comes from the overall transformation of capitalist production mechanism.In this context,consumption gets rid of the restrictions of traditional production and becomes the leading force of social development.The use value of consumption changes to symbolic value.In the transformation of symbolic value surpassing use value,Consumption itself has been alienated,showing modern consumption forms such as luxury consumption and false consumption,which deviates from people’s real needs and development purport;At the same time,when consumption gradually occupies the core and dominant position of social politics,economy,society and culture,consumption virtually obtains a supreme power.It has become the main dominant force of modern people’s way of life,resulting in the loss of human essence and the overall alienation of survival.Consumption alienation is essentially the expansion and deepening of labor alienation to the field of consumption.It reflects the deepening of the general alienation of human survival under the condition of capitalism.The tracing of the origin and essence of modern consumption alienation can not be limited to modern consumption itself,nor can it stay in the perspective of cultural value criticism.Instead,we should explore how alienation extends from labor to consumption under the conditions of capitalism,and how the logical operation of capital manipulates and dominates modern consumption,so as to reveal the capitalist system root of modern consumption alienation.With the in-depth development of consumption alienation,it has caused many repeated and miscellaneous consequences in modern times,such as politics,society,culture and ecology,and posed unprecedented challenges to the relationship between man,nature and society.Modern western thinkers’ criticism of consumption alienation mainly includes three directions.First,the criticism of symbolic political economy represented by Baudrillard combed the transformation of consumption from "Natural consumption social production to exchange system",and criticized the regulation and domination of capitalist symbolic value on human survival;Second,the criticism of ecological Marxism represented by rice,Goz and Agger criticizes the ecological crisis and human survival crisis caused by consumption alienation with the criticism of capital logic and the construction of ecological logic as the core.Third,the philosophical criticism of life politics represented by Foucault and Agger.They take the life politics and life power constructed by capitalism as the object to reveal the rule of modern capitalism over life power.Western modern thinkers’ criticism of consumption alienation reveals the capitalist reality of consumption alienation from different levels,but on the whole,it still has an abstract nature,essentially fails to touch the capitalist system itself,and lacks practical,revolutionary and realistic purport.Starting from the social reality of capitalist production,Marx’s historical materialism points out that the root cause of alienation lies in the exploitative essence brought by capitalist private ownership and its class relations,and advocates the fundamental sublation of consumption alienation and even the overall alienation of human nature through the reform of capitalist system.Marx’s historical materialism provides the fundamental methodological principles for criticizing consumption alienation.Only by fundamentally changing the capitalist social system that leads to the alienation of consumption,changing the unreasonable consumption concept and consumption mode,realizing the return of consumption to people’s real needs,and making consumption become the free expression and confirmation of people’s own production and human essence,can we really build a consumption civilization accessible to a better life and realize the social ideal of people’s free and all-round development.