Consumerism reduces folk politics from a movement to an ideology | Sunita Samal

Abstract: A new spirit of materialism, and sensual indulgence began to take root after World War II. As the commercialization of identity took an aura of prestige, the argument that the unauthorized advertising use of one’s image subjected one to extreme indignity and became difficult to maintain. The privacy concern has thus moved from duty realm of legal theory to the issues of ‘public interest’. In the new worldwide information age that enhances consumerism, parallel rights are constantly articulated in folk -politics. It suggests that totalitarianism can be imposed without terror motive.

Keywords: Folk-politics, consumerism, ideology, late capitalism, age of information, colonization of desire, public sphere.

Introduction:

Herbert Marcuse in his book ‘One Dimensional Man’ (1964) strongly criticizes consumerism arguing that it is a form of social control. The folk-politics we carry out and live in, may claim to be democratic but it is many times actually authoritarian in that few individuals dictate our perceptions of freedom by allowing us choices to buy happiness. Today, the line between information, entertainment and promotion of products has been blurred so that people are more reformulated into consumerist behavior. Alienation refers to the distancing of people from totality of social world. It can be used more broadly to describe the processes of stripping a real place or event of its original character and repackaging it in a sanitized form. We have to analyze how folk politics makes moral compromises on the matrix of consumerism where the invention of the commodity itself is a driving force that builds a sense of identity. Modernist aesthetics is in some way organically linked to the conception of a unique vision of the world.

Consumerism succeeded where other ideologies failed because it concretely expressed the cardinal political ideals of the century—liberty and democracy.
Colonization of Desire: Democracy has of course adopted many of the policies that would be called ‘socialism’ in Europe and ‘liberal’ in America. Karl Marx dictated the fall of man in the institution of private property which has apparently emerged after the nomadic stage of private communism. The ambition to replace politics with morality in democracy covers every small detail of the life of the citizen.

Is folk politics an answer to solve the problem of alienation? Folk politics is blurring the private-public sphere in the market economy through rhetoric. It seems that it strengthens the traditional ties of civil society and weakens individualization which is not always so. Folk politics aims at bringing politics down to the human scale. We can say that it is the bottom-up thin ideology. It is a change through personal involvement over the institutional process. It is a tactic over complex strategy and horizontal over hierarchical. The question is whether this action is more a habit than a solution. Folk politics is a movement that presents the people as a moral force and constraints them against elite who seems to be corrupt and self-serving.

Kevin Carson [1] holds that capitalism arising as a new class society directly from the old class society of the Middle Ages was founded on earlier feudal conquest of the land. It has been sustained to the present by continual state intervention to protect the system of privilege to which folk politics is an answer.

Fredric Jameson’s [2] important reminder is that the market is just as utopian as socialism. For Deleuze and Guattari [3], it does not mean that capitalism does not have ego, it continually breaks down the cultural symbolic, and linguistic barriers that create territory and its limit. Christianity turned human attention away from political conquest and worldly pursuit towards the cultivation of inner life.

The modern economy is called ‘political’ to distinguish it from the ancient household economy. The application of reason to economic competition was called mercantilism. It increasingly left commerce unregulated following the principle elaborated by Adam Smith. According to him, trade benefits both parties which laid the foundation of liberalism. By the end of the eighteenth century, Europeans had learned to understand themselves as subjects in the public sphere and citizens in the state. Rationalism had taught them to regard themselves as part of humanity, possibly sharing in what was called ‘the right of man’.

The term ‘Folk Politics’ has been recently introduced by Nick Srnicek and Alex Williams to describe a prevailing leftist tactic at the beginning of 21st century with its dominant focus on direct action, horizontals and local solutions. While the hegemony of folk politics began with the rise of alter-globalism in the nineties, its decline has been represented by the failure of the Occupy movement after 2011.

Whereas M. Foucault’s emphasis is on the disciplinary technologies of modernity and the targeting of the body within regimes of power and knowledge, Deleuze and Guattari focus on the ‘colonization of desire’ by various modern institutions and discourses. For example, Guattari began to believe that what made patients ill was not their particular pathology but a form of social alienation--- a problem made worse by the dehumanizing activities of doctors, nurses, and traditional medical systems. Guattari said it was necessary to build a new form of subjectivity that no longer relies on the individual. His problem was never a particular person but the process by which groups break up into discrete units detached from one another and their own lives.

The shift is one oriented from promoting the integrity of individual identity to protecting its economic values. Now ‘public’ is nothing other than profit-making. The rationale was that a person who made a business out of publicizing herself could not legitimately claim that her dignity or ‘privacy’ had been injured. The right to publicity eclipsed the right to privacy when modern consumer culture came to see loss of profit as the more serious and probable consequences of the unauthorized commercial exploitation of a person’s image rather than harm to one’s dignity and emotion.

The emergence of the internet gives rise to much expectation about the potential reconfiguration of the private sphere as public. Observers also hope that Internet communication will lead to more inclusive public debates. Here, the division between the private sphere and the public sphere is blurring. Dissemination of information and control of people’s minds will go side by side in the digital age.

Hominization of Consumption Culture: In the last decade of the nineteenth century, the prevailing middle-class values were modesty and self-restraint, and advertising and consumerism were associated with forbidden temptation and morally illicit [4]. By 1940s, the cultural meaning of mass consumption had entirely transformed. There was the involvement of celebrity culture and consumer culture obsessed with conspicuous consumption. Being publicly associated with products and being seen by the public as an endorser of products were no longer regarded as humiliating and disrespectable acts, but rather, in many cases glamorous and prestigious. The right of publicity eclipsed the right of privacy when modern consumer culture came to see loss of profit as the more serious and probable consequence of the unauthorized commercial exploitation of a person’s image rather than harm to one’s dignity.

In the 1950s, the celebrated era of post-war influence and mass consumption, the US court began to formally recognize the ‘right to publicity’—a purely pecuniary interest in the commercial exploitation of identity distinct from the right to privacy. Under this, new right of publicity damage would be computed in terms of the value of the publicity appropriate by defendant rather than in terms of injury sustained by the plaintiff [5]. The public issues in the United States are as old as the nation itself. We, thus enter the present situation in which privacy is guaranteed not by personal behavior but by federally mandated legislation. What Americans witness at the level of public opinion is a desire for privacy but at the same time, a demand for maximum access to information. Whether such digital development including the internet constitutes a threat to privacy or is simply a characteristic of advanced computer systems is a matter of debate. At this stage, the technology must be able to distinguish between national security needs and personal anonymity and between corporate needs and personal identity. The erosion of privacy is not simply a matter of individuals but spills over into the nature of business as a whole.

The identity of anything depends on what is not. The problem of us versus them can be addressed through identities and encounters. The present is being molded out of the past yet constantly recreating the past. Extreme and moderate are caught between us and them. Today’s overload of information sources offered more myth than history. The common action in democracy is voting and then shopping. Shopping implies homogenization of consumption culture that replicates, reproduces, and reinforces the logic of capitalism which may be a logical conclusion of modern democracy. In many respects, the digital media culture of the late 20th century stimulates the schizoid experience that converts media culture into capitalist mass culture.

Each and every major corporation in the world has a website offering product information, interactive advertisements, and the ability to buy products online. Late capitalism not only accelerates the flow of capital but also accelerates the rate at which subjects assume identities. The internet is one of the many late capitalist phenomena that allow for more flexible, rapid, and profitable mechanisms of identity formation.

Ideology is a set of ideas explaining the world and stimulating mass action and inaction. Movement is a collective action that arises from a natural and universal desire for social egalitarianism. Is the fulfillment of worldly duties the only way to live under all circumstances? The moral justification of worldly activity is attacked by modern campaign against trust without which folk politics cannot exist. Identity formation is inextricably linked to consumerist culture that gradually explains the world.

While consumerism as an ideology can be presented in several different types of economic systems, it is most often associated with capitalism. In 1899 Thorstein Veblen published a book ‘The Theory of Leisure Class’ that examined the widespread values and economic institutions emerging along with the widespread leisure class, at the beginning of the 20th century. Here, the consumption of products became a vital task for more people.

Globalization, Consumerism, and Folk Politics: As such consumerism reduces folk politics as an ideology that emerged alongside capitalism and spread throughout Europe, North America, and the rest of the world. During the early years of the development of consumerism, two major historical events came to play an important role which included the Industrial Revolution and The Age of Imperialism

However, when socialist values emerged to support the working class, a strong middle-class people emerged. As a result, many historians consider the emergence of the middle class in Europe and North America as a major contributor of the intensification of consumerism. Out-sourcing helped to intensify consumerism throughout the world. It kept the cost of many goods low, allowing mass production and distribution of consumer goods.

Gary Cross in his book ‘All Consuming Century: Why Consumerism Won in Modern America’ stated that consumerism succeeded where other ideologies failed because it concretely expressed the cardinal political ideals of the century—He discusses how consumerism won in its form of expression. The idea of individual choice is exploited by corporations that claim to sell ‘uniqueness’ and the building block of an identity.

James Gustave Speth argues that the growth imperative represents the main goal of capitalist consumerism. In his book ‘The Bridge at the Edge of the World’ He noted how the economic system does not work when it comes to protecting the environment and the political system does not work when it comes to correcting the economic system.

Consumerism creates a cultural hegemony and is part of a general process of social control. Consumerism leads us further away from our humanity and makes us forget the interrelated nature between ourselves and the environment. Fukuyama blames consumerism for moral compromise [6].

Critics assert that there are other dimensions of human existence formerly considered private, which have now become part of the entire system of social domination man by man. Willam Ophul posits that liberal democracies are unfit to address environmental problems and that the prioritization of these challenges would involve a transition to more authoritarian forms of government. Deliberative democracy has been discussed as a political model more compatible with environmental goals [7].

On a global scale, those most impacted by the effects of climate change may have little say in determining policies that would curb emissions or otherwise work to adapt to climate outcomes. New materialism encourages political action according to this world vision, even if it is incomparable with economic growth.

In late capitalism, consumerism induces people to make moral compromises with themselves daily in the name of self-realization or personal growth. Late capitalism not only accelerates at which subjects assume identities. Critics of consumerism not only environmentally non-sustainable but also the spread of consumerism in cultural aspects.

Does consumerism let Folk Politics to sustain in late capitalism? Consumerism as an ideology can be presented in several different types of economic systems, it is most often associated with capitalism. Late capitalism turned planned obsolescence and advertising into manipulation of consumer spending. Consumerism is a part of folk politics that turns it not only into a movement but also as an ideology.

The idea of individual choice is exploited by corporations that claim to sell ‘uniqueness’ and the commodity itself is a driving force of consumer societies preying upon the deep human need to build a sense of identity. In this way, the consumerist ideology can be witnessed all around the world. But the alternative is also complicated by an extreme interpretation of advertising and commodification because everything is a commodity.

Conclusion: Although we live in a world that is thoroughly dominated by market forces and saturated by the culture of consumption, people may well feel legitimate distrust at having their image made serve the economic needs and interests of others. In the 21st century, consumerism has become a noticeable part of any culture that many times determined folk politics to be successful. Late Capitalism not only accelerates the flow of capital but also accelerates at which subjects assume identities. New materialism is related to the shift from a view of the environment as a form of ‘capital’ to a form of ‘labor’. It is said that the good life can be pursued through the practice of consumerism. It has become the dominant matrix for folk politics that expresses not ‘one man, one voice’ but the ideology of ‘one dollar, one voice’.

(Author: Dr. Sunita Samal, Political Commentator, she has written multiple books including ‘Politics by Other Means: Domain of Body, Objectivity and Audit Culture’)