Capitalism and Consumerism

[BobKKKindle$]

Lately I have been learning about the role and character of advertising in liberal post-industrial socieites - in particular, how firms do not place emphasis on the utility of products through advertising, but instead try to draw irrational links between abstract emotional concepts and ideas such as sexuality, and consumer goods. I can understand how this has an economic role - both for the capitalist system as a whole and for the individual firm - through sustaining high levels of consumer demand for long periods of time - but what social and psychological effects does this have, especially in terms of rebellion? How does advertising and 'the spectacle' function as a tool of social repression?

Several sources - including 'The Century of the Self' have suggested that advertising makes people 'docile' without really explaning why and I would love any further information and insights.

[mikelepore]

I don't think the part about "sustaining high levels of consumer demand" is correct. I think the net effect on consumer demand is close to zero, and at a very high social cost. I think most of adverting has the role of brand X advertising "Please switch from brand Y to brand X", which perhaps a million people do, and brand Y advertising "Please switch from brand X to brand Y", which perhaps a million people, for a net effect of about zero for the capitalist advertisers. So the real character of advertising is pure waste: waste of workers' labor time when they produce the surplus value that pays for it, waste of their leisure time when they have to look at the useless "information", and waste of energy and other natural resources. Just as country is compelled to waste resources on a military branch only to match other countries' waste on their own military branches, so that the net accomplishment will be zero, the capitalist is compelled to waste resources on advertising to cancel out other capitalists' waste on advertising, so that the net accomplishment will be zero. The attainment of that zero, the fact that your competitor was unable to get too far ahead of you, was a principal objective of doing it.

Does that make people docile? When people are immersed in an type of glaring irrationality for their lifetimes, that society will continue in a steady state only by means of the popular assumption "this is the best of all possible systems"; "the situation seems inefficient, nevertheless, it's the only conceivable way that things could ever be." Historically, that assumption is probably the most common and the most effective producer of conservativism. The mood may be apathy, but the root of it is limited imagination.