Consumer Critique

Consumption is an important link in human material production and production; it is also one of the primary conditions of human survival and development. But "alienation" invades the consumption field; consumption alienation has already become the collection points of various alienations in contemporary capitalism. Life styles taking consumerism as direction that nowadays generally advocate in the world, guiding our mankind into a kind of terrible condition, we have to take our introspection to the consumption pattern. So, I have introduced the concept, characteristic and essence of consumerism in Chapter one briefly, and has described the state of consumption of alienation and harmful effects that brought to people's life and social development especially on this basis.Marx's theory of labor alienation has a deep criticism meaning to social problems which brought about by modernity, including alienation consumption .We can regard "alienation consumption" as a relative concept which constructed according to Marx's "labor alienation". Because of this train of thought, Chapter two and three of this article are under the visual angle of the theory of labor alienation. Probe into the origin of consumption of alienation from all kinds of angles such as "labor ", " need ", "capital", "commodity fetishism" separately, I think it is exactly the labor alienation and the principle of capital that result in the alienation of consumption indirectly.Marx's criticism of "labor alienation" and "commodity fetishism" becomes an inexhaustible resource to Western Marxist in 20th century. The Western Marxist inherited the criticism traditional of the theory of labor alienation. Under the guidance of the theory of labor alienation, along with the similar path to criticize the consumption alienation. I believe that some of their theories are reasonable, we should learn from it.In our country, the consumption alienation is not only a theoretical question, but also an urgent realistic question. We need to contrast the consumption alienation with the life style which Marx had designed for mankind, discard the consumption alienation .The final purpose is to build a new life style, seek the return of the spiritual home, pursuit social harmony and the freedom of human being.