Dialectic Thoughts On Luxury Consumption

The term of Luxury Consumption stands for extraordinary and even wasteful behavior of consumption. The idea of luxury consumption exists as early as the era of ancient Greece. When it comes to the industrial era (or even post-industrial one), the thoughts of "Consume for consumption itself” have been widely spread, and become some kind of civilization illness. Both in Western and Eastern societies, people develops various forms of luxury consumption. Also, the subject of luxury consumption turns from privilege class to general public.In modern society, people’s social relations is formed and constructed by consumption. The individual depends on consumption to attain the meaning of life. Consumption is no longer human’s means of survival, but the main and highest purpose during his life. This idea is regularly called Consumerism. When people blindly follow consumption (especially luxury consumption) and worship it as the final goal of their lives, Consumerism turns to be a kind of fetishism. Also, under the leading influence of luxury consumption, the main focus of social development changes from production to consumption.People weights luxury consumption by two factors:Actual living level of consumer and Concrete use value of goods, both of which are relative. For that reason, people hold different position on the issue of luxury consumption, but two of which need to be specially emphasized. The first one simply worships luxury consumption and treats it as the highest goal of life. The second one refuses to accept the positive function of luxury consumption, and treats it as the tumor of society, which should be completely removed. Neither of the two positions considers the issue of luxury consumption seriously and reflexively.We choose anti-consumerism as our basic position in order to discuss this issue more dialectally. In the sense of Marxism, the construction towards consumption in modern society is a variant expression of the augment of capital, whose essence is the alienation of human being. The behavior of luxury consumption thus needs to attain the reverse of purpose and means, in order to become a necessary means again. The means could be quite valuable and attractive, but must first not exceed the sphere of means. Also, the purpose of human being must only be human being itself. This should be the very premise of the discussion of luxury consumption.