CHAPTER XXII.
CONSUMERISM, PLANNED OBSOLESCENCE.
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As we have seen, advertising has developed into a socially obnoxious feature of capitalist economy. It is like a drug being pushed on the public to make everyone a craving compulsive consumer.
But just in case that advertising may not be effective on some sections of the public, or just in case that some people may resist the pressure and drop out of the rat race, the capitalist has devised a method by which he uses his servants, science and technology, not to produce goods that last, but goods that fall apart or break down after a scientifically determined short space of time. Many of these commodities are made in such a way that they cannot be taken apart and repaired.
As new commodities continually invade the market, because of competition between the capitalists, so they quickly disappear from existence not long after they have been bought. This new economic device is euphemistically called planned obsolescence. Its prime purpose is the same as advertising, but it is more like a weapon than a drug a weapon designed for the systematic destruction of commodities. Therefore, it is far more effective than advertising in forcing unwilling customers towards the market place.
It is the quintessence of the waste of labour power, energy and resources, and the consequent despoliation of our environment.
Moreover, planned obsolescence nullifies the advantages to society that should come from the rise in production, because while the cost of production and consumer goods has been decreasing in relation to our incomes, we are forced to buy the same goods far more often than before, as their life span has been shortened.
While most products are cheaper than in the past, we are forced to buy them more often. Therefore their use is just as expensive as before if not more.
The capitalist, without giving us a choice, has instinctively decided that we should have 'planned obsolescence' because, as he explains, given the fast technological changes there is no point in making things that last. The public, they say, must have the best and latest commodities as soon as they appear on the market, and, besides, it is planned obsolescence which provides a lot of people with work.
It is difficult to find fault with this logic which springs from capitalist economic necessity: the necessity of the merchant in a saturated market environment.
It is the new problems of endemic overproduction and market saturation, that Adam Smith and Karl Marx would have considered absurd, which create the necessity to continually clear the markets for new commodities, to maintain in motion the cycle of capitalist production: investment of capital in the production of commodities, their sale in the market, realisation of profit, increase of capital, more investment in production of commodities, and so on. As Capitalism finds more and more difficulty in finding new markets for increased production, turnover is accelerated in the existing markets by limiting the life of the commodities being sold. In this way the rate of production is maintained.
The public is not the end, it is just a necessary incidental in the process, to be manipulated to suit the needs of the mercantile system.
We witness, today, the complete perversion of rationality and common sense: not an economy suited to the needs of society, but a society sacrificed to the needs of an obsolete economy.
We must remember that the word "consumption" has assumed a new meaning since Adam Smith's times. In that age of scarcity the word implied the use of commodities for their utility; and waste was considered a sin. Today, consumption is mainly related to the act of buying in itself with little consideration for usefulness or benefit, and has the connotation of waste.
This is what Adam Smith stated should be the rational intention and purpose of an economic system:
"Political economy . . . proposes . . . first to provide a plentiful revenue or subsistence for the people, or more properly to enable them to provide such a revenue or subsistence for themselves...."
But today, in the present unnatural stage, Humanity and the planet Earth are being sacrificed to the economy for the momentary self interest of the modern merchants and manufacturers and their entourage, at most twenty percent of the world population.
Another wasteful and polluting device to increase investment and profits is one certain aspect of the retail industry. It mainly has to do with "packaging"; packaging can be convenient and is an important part of salesmanship, but it is also a mean of "adding value" to the commodities and forcing the public to buy more than it needs and also to buy a lot of plastic, paper and cardboard that it does not need at all. For the capitalist businessmen it is a new opening for investment of capital; a new profitable industry which transforms natural resources into a pile of rubbish.
This is a short and general description of one of the new aspects of modern Capitalism : 'consumer credit', 'high pressure advertising' and 'planned obsolescence', these constitute what today is called 'consumerism', a word which, personally, I resent and despise. To accept such a denomination and such a situation, of being a consumer in a consumer society, is to accept the gradual transformation of Human beings into creatures with a big mouth at one end, a large anus at the other, and no brain in between, all clean and 'whiter than white', sitting on a heap of waste and smelly effluent which once was a beautiful planet, our Mother Earth.
It should be evident that the scourge of 'consumerism' is the main cause for the waste of energy, raw materials, labour power, and the systematic destruction of our environment; and consumerism is the direct result of the irrational and inequitable development of modern Capitalism; I said 'inequitable' because while a minority of the world population and their pets over-consume and waste, they also suck materials and resources from the under-developed parts of the world where entire populations live in poverty and millions succumb to starvation.
To conclude this subject, we must consider another contradiction, arising from the development of consumerism, that cannot be resolved within capitalist economy: while the workforce, which constitutes the majority of consumers, is being pushed by the advertising industry on behalf of one section of the capitalists to buy more and more, they are at the same time subjected by another section to a continuous pressure to produce more and more, and to continuous attempts to lower their real incomes and buying power; forcing them into debt if they want to buy anything more than the means of their subsistence.
Having devised the philosophy of "The Virtue of Selfishness ", the apologists of Capitalism would have today the unenviable task of inventing also the philosophy of 'The Virtue of Irrationality'.