Daily Times

Consumerism is yet another significant feature of globalisation. In industrial progress the uneven development of capitalism has left many underdeveloped countries lagging far behind the developed ones. Hence, their national bourgeoisie is either extremely weak or exists in collaboration with the junker class. In either case, its historical role has prematurely come to an end. Instead, it has been overtaken by international capital, which has plied the market with various commodities. These commodities, while satisfying human needs, perpetuate his servitude. The flag flaunted by capitalism claims for everyone an unrestricted freedom of choice. Herbert Marcuse succinctly points out that “the range of choice open to the individual is not the decisive factor in determining the degree of human freedom, but what can be chosen and what is chosen by the individual.” He goes further by asking some very pertinent questions: “Do exploitation and domination cease to be what they are and what they do to man if they are no longer suffered, if they are ‘compensated’ by previously unknown comforts? Does labour cease to be debilitating if mental energy increasingly replaces physical energy in producing the goods and services, which sustain a system that makes a hell of large areas of the globe?”

Capitalism attaches the person libidinally with commodity. A consumer ends up consuming himself in buying and selling in the market. Everything turns into a commodity. Every other point of view gets eclipsed. Horkheimer provides a fitting account of the total abrogation of every other concept based on human values. He says: “The story of the boy who looked up at the sky and asked, ‘Daddy what is the moon supposed to advertise?’ is an allegory of what has happened to the relation between man and nature in the era of formalised reason. When a man is asked to admire a thing, to respect a feeling or attitude, to love a person for his own sake, he suspects sentimentality and suspects someone is pulling his leg or trying to sell him something.” Survival is based on a single criterion: adjusting oneself to the norms of market by “giving up his hope of ultimate self-realisation” {Horkheimer}. Herbert precisely states that, “if the individual were no longer compelled to prove himself in the market, as a free economic subject, the disappearance of this kind of freedom would be one of the greatest achievements of civilisation. The technological processes of mechanisation and standardisation might release individual energy into a yet uncharted realm of freedom beyond necessity. [If this happens] The very structure of human existence would be altered.”

At this juncture, Herbert inquires: “Is such a change in the ‘nature’ of man conceivable?” His reply is in the affirmative. He says: “I believe so because technical progress has reached a stage in which reality no longer need be defined by the debilitating competition for social survival and advancement. The more these technical capacities outgrow the framework of exploitation within which they continue to be confined and abused, the more they propel the drives and aspirations of men to a point at which the necessities of life cease to demand the aggressive performances of ‘earning a living,’ and the ‘non-necessary’ becomes a vital need.” Once this system based on objectified alienated labour is toppled, the concept of the emergence of a new society — about which even Marx and Engels refrained to comment in detail — has been explicitly described by Marcuse. He says: “The growth of the productive forces suggests possibilities of human liberty very different from, and beyond, those envisaged at the earlier stage. Moreover, these real possibilities suggest that the gap, which separates a free society from the existing societies would be wider and deeper precisely to the degree to which the repressive power and productivity of the latter shape man and his environment in their image and interest.” This was the society that Marx always dreamed about. This will be the precursor of the globalization, which would turn humanity into a single, large heart capable of palpating with a uniform rhythm. Only and only then “the human existence (will) is no longer objectified, and no longer exhausts itself in alien and alienable things. Thus the way will be opened for the mutual recognition of human beings as free individuals” (Marcuse).

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The writer is based in Australia and has authored books on socialism and history. He can be reached at saulatnagi@hotmail.com