CHAPTER XXI.
CONSUMERISM, ADVERTISING.
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There is a difference between the straightforward advertising of a product's objective qualities and specifications, and the present pervasive pushing of commodities and services without consideration for truth and social consequences.
But such is the present attack on the minds of the general public by the 'merchants of dreams'.
Having saturated the markets and exhausted all known forms of competition but open warfare, the capitalists are reduced to steal customers from each other and try to reduce the public into consumption addicts.
To stimulate sales, every commodity must become an ideal and a symbol: every superfluous or even obnoxious thing must become a necessity, a question of life and death to possess. We must find the elusive end of the rainbow, and the obtainment of sublime happiness behind the purchase of every commodity. The act of buying had to become a festive ceremonial of self satisfaction and achievement.
With this assault on their minds, the public, beginning with the children, is being reduced into a state of moronic stupidity: actors in a world of make believe in which the only reality and the ultimate purpose is the sound of the cash register in the capitalist market place. Behind the sparkle of the shopping centre, behind the glitter of the shop windows, and behind the artificial plastic smiles of the advertiser and the salesman, society is becoming harsher and more insensitive.
Moreover, as at a tender age a person cannot separate reality from fiction, it is the minds of children that are being irreparably devastated by this assault by the capitalist merchants and his servants : 'The Hidden Persuaders' (Vance Packard).
The task of the 'hidden persuaders' is to convince everybody, including themselves, that we should buy everything that comes into the market; that this is what we want and is in our interest to do. These are some of the more evident results : the change of the Human race into a race of compulsive consumers by keeping every man woman and child in a state of continuous imbalance, never satisfied for long with what one has just bought, always desiring something else, in a continuous state of want and imaginary scarcity, feeling always poor, no matter how rich and bloated one may be; All this for the main purpose of creating and keeping alive an artificial unnatural market for capitalist production.
As a state of almost general and permanent indebtedness creates social problems, as everyone except the capitalists will agree, a state of continuous want and frustration, especially when the majority of society is not in the position to be able to satisfy all these new wants, must cause personal and social pressures detrimental to good human relations.
The result is a society of people who are all acting a part, living for unobtainable dreams, always dissatisfied no matter how much they may have, all being busily absorbed in a competitive rat race in which all individuals are drawn apart from one another. Everybody is chasing after dreams represented by commodities the wealthy with the attitudes of paupers and misers.
But even advertising, like consumer credit, can only give a limited and temporary boost to a faltering capitalist economy: there is a limit to what people can spend and borrow; moreover some people cannot be fooled all the time and sooner or later they may realise how stupid they have been made to look. Consequently, another more effective device had to be found to keep the cycle of production in motion and the profits coming in: this new economic stimulant is euphemistically called 'planned obsolescence'.