Study On The Theory Of Consumption Alienation Of Western Marxism

Consumption alienation is a serious social alienation phenomenon in the process of transformation from a production-oriented society to a consumption-oriented society in western developed capitalist countries.Different from Marx’s so-called labor alienation and more subtle and profound than labor alienation,consumption alienation has aroused the attention and study of many western Marxist schools and scholars,and formed various theories on consumption alienation.First of all,Frankfurt School is the one that pays attention to the problem of consumption alienation earlier.Adorno and other members of the Frankfurt School made a multi-dimensional analysis of consumption alienation from the aspects of cultural industry,false needs,social character and psychological mechanism.In their opinion,for the purpose of economic growth and political domination,capitalism inevitably shapes people into "consumers" or "slaves of consumption" who lose their subjectivity and criticality by manipulating needs and using the ideology of consumption.Frankfurt School’s critical analysis of consumption alienation highlights its theoretical importance and provides an important theoretical point for contemporary capitalist criticism.Secondly,French scholars represented by Lefebvre have revealed the consumption alienation phenomenon in modern capitalist society with the core of "the bureaucratic society of controlled consumption".In his opinion,consumption alienation not only means that consumption itself has become the object dominated and controlled by capitalism,but also consumption has become a tool for capitalism to organize and control daily life,thus ensuring the sustainable development of capitalism and social harmony.Different from the Frankfurt School,Lefebvre’s interpretation of "the bureaucratic society of controlled consumption" more clearly reveals that the object of organization and the ruling center of postwar capitalist society has shifted from the labor-production field to the consumption-daily life field.And further reveals that the ruling strategy of capitalism has shifted from the coercive oppression in the field of production to the concealed repression in the field of consumption.Thirdly,Baudrillard’s "symbolic consumption" theory reveals the consumption alienation in modern capitalist society at a deeper level.In his opinion,consumption is not only consumption and use in daily life,but also a symbol of identity and status.Just like the coding and copying of symbols,consumption is also in the cycle of"copying and reproduction".Consumption is dissimilated into a symbolic communication system similar to language by the coding of the differential symbol system,which is controlled by capital power and brought into the logic program of capitalist reproduction.Thus,consumption becomes a huge social and political field.As "an unconscious mechanism of integration and regulation",the difference symbol system not only completely cancels the subjectivity of human beings,but also transforms the substantial differences containing contradictions and conflicts into empty formal differences,thus canceling the possibility of the outbreak of social conflicts and realizing the integration of human beings and society.Finally,the critical theory of consumption of Ecological Marxism holds that the alienation of consumption is the logical counterpart of the alienation of labor.This theory reveals the ideological nature that consumption can compensate for alienated labor.They mainly take the ecological boundary as the base point to criticize the alienation of consumption,and believe that behind the alienation of consumption is not only the alienation of human existence,but also the alienation of the relationship between human and nature.Thus,the focus of the criticism of the alienation of consumption is shifted from the ideological criticism to the ecological criticism,and the critical horizon of the alienation of consumption is expanded.In short,the western Marxist theory of consumption alienation profoundly reveals the high dependence of developed capitalism on consumption in terms of economic growth and social governance.It expands the critical vision of alienation theory and shows that consumption is a form of alienation deep into the inner psychological structure and consciousness of human beings.It also analyzes the weakening and oppressive effects of consumption ideology on proletarian revolutionary consciousness.At the same time,we must see that western Marxists in the process of criticizing the consumption alienation dissever the relationship between the production and consumption of generality,and overfocused their criticism on consumption while ignoring the capitalist production process behind consumption.Therefore,they could not deeply grasp the inherent contradictions of capitalism exposed by consumption alienation,and thus could not find the correct path to overcome consumption alienation.Therefore,we must adhere to the basic point of view of Marxism,starting from the critical perspective of Marx’s political economy,correctly understand the relations among production,distribution,exchange and consumption in the capitalist society.In today’s capitalist era,the purpose of capitalism to stimulate consumption is to realize surplus value;However,the ability of consumption or the effectiveness of demand is fundamentally limited by the distributive relationship corresponding to the capitalist relations of production,and the distributive relationship determined by the relations of production characterized by exploitation cannot truly liberate the consuming power of human beings,and will induce the crisis of overproduction.The outbreak of these crises indicates the realistic possibility of the self-destruction of capitalism,which also indicates the realistic possibility of overcoming the alienation of consumption and moving towards the future communist society.