Study Questions

Max Weber characterized the relationship between capitalism's "highest good" and the pursuit of enjoyment in life as follows: 

"In fact, the summum bonum of this ethic, the earning of more and more money, combined with the strict avoidance of all spontaneous enjoyment of life, is above all completely devoid of any eudaemonistic, not to say hedonistic, admixture.  It is thought of so purely as an end in itself, that from the point of view of the happiness of, or utility to, the single individual, it appears entirely transcendental and absolutely irrational.  Man is dominated by the making of money, by acquisition as the ultimate purpose of his life.  Economic acquisition is no longer subordinated to man as the means for the satisfaction of his material needs.  This reversal of what we should call the natural relationship, so irrational from a naive point of view, is evidently as definitely a leading principle of capitalism as it is foreign to all peoples not under capitalistic influence." (353)

Whereas Daniel Bell saw the consumerism of the "new capitalism" as creating hedonistic sensibilities contradictory to capitalist purposes, Baudrillard argues that even the "fun morality of "consumer society" is cramped by the same inverted priorities of which Weber wrote.  How can that be? For Marx, commodities were fetishes because, as values (as opposed to as use-values), they have social clout, purchasing power; they can be converted into money and, from there, into commodities of one's choice.  Baudrillard seems to be driving at a new sort or new sorts of commodity fetishism.  The new levels of affluence characteristic of "consumer society" mean that we come to live more and more "under the silent gaze of deceptive and obedient objects"; consequently, we are more and more absent to one another.  Sounding anew the Marxian alarm over alienation and domination by our own products, Baudrillard writes of these proliferating commodities: "These fauna and flora, which people have produced, have come to encircle and invest them, like a bad science fiction novel" (450).  Is this an odd sort of thing to say about the fulfillment of the dream of widespread plenty? What sort of experiences might Baudrillard have in mind?

Baudrillard speaks of shopping as participating in a "feast."  Has shopping replaced the medieval Christian celebration of religious feast days?  Perhaps the feast of Christmas would be a place to start thinking about this.  Beyond the profusion of goods that characterizes merchandising in a "consumer society" there are the "directive paths" formed by "networks of objects" (451).  Thus, Baudrillard writes: "Clothing, appliances, and toiletries thus constitute object paths, which establish inertial constraints on the consumer who will proceed logically from one object to the next" (451).  Can you think of some specific examples of such networks? What are some of the different ways in which commodities are networked (e.g. by brand name)?

According to Baudrillard, the ordinary department store (How many department stores are there in downtown Omaha?  How many free-standing (i.e., not part of some fore of a shopping mall)?) is too much like the old fashioned dry goods store where people went for everyday consumables to capture the spirit of consumer society.  Modern shopping malls, according to Baudrillard, are much more indicative of that spirit?  How so?  This essay was written about thirty years ago; in the past ten or twenty years we have seen the explosion of post-modern, "festival" malls.  These would include the Mall of the Americas in Minnesota, the Baltimore Harbor, Riverwalk in New Orleans, Navy Pier in Chicago, the Atlanta Underground, Union Station in St. Louis, and many more.  Locally, Crossroads Mall is a wonderful example of a sixties-style modern mall that was given an eighties-style most-modern face-lift.  How are these new malls different and what are we to make of them in terms of Baudrillard's conception of "consumer society"? In discussing Europe's largest shopping center, PARLY 2, Baudrillard writes: "Here we are at the heart of consumption as the total organization of everyday life, as a complete homogenization" (454).  The film "The Truman Show," which depicts a man awaking to the nightmare realization that his entire life has been simulated for the amusement of a TV audience pushes Baudrillard's fears to the limits.  What features of ordinary American life might give rise to such worries?

Aristotle and Marx spoke of commodities having use-value and exchange-value; Baudrillard follows Veblen in thinking of commodities as having status or "sign" value as well.  What does he mean by the "code" under which commodities fall?  What evidence is there of such a "code"?  In what sense do commodities form a kind of language (464-465)?

Baudrillard picks out three general positions in the discourse on consumption (455).  One is the standard model from economics (as found in Marshall, for example) of the rational self-seeker, homo economicus.  A second is the sociological model of Gervasi and Parsons, which thinks of consumption in terms of individuals conforming to social norms.  The third, which is of most interest to Baudrillard, is that of the American economist John Kenneth Galbraith.  Galbraith emphasizes the "artificial" acceleration of consumer needs by advertisers trying to solve the problem of overproduction.  What criticisms does Baudrillard make of each of these three general theories?  What does Galbraith mean by the "accepted sequence" and the "revised sequence"?  Veblen criticized economists for failing to see that commodities are bound up with a system of allocating social status or rank.  How does that compare with Baudrillard's critique of Galbraith (459-460)?

What is Baudrillard driving at when he writes, "the system of needs is the product of the system of production" (460) and "needs and consumption are in fact an organized extension of productive forces" (462)?  Compare Baudrillard's approach to consumer society to that of Bell.  (See, in particular, the bottom of 467.)  What does Baudrillard mean by saying that "puritan ethics...haunts consumption and needs" (461)?  What's the "fun morality" (465-466) that Baudrillard talks about and how is it related to Puritanism?

What does Baudrillard mean in writing, "The world of objects and of needs would thus be a world of general hysteria" (463)?  Are there signs of hysteria in contemporary consumer behavior?  How is Baudrillard's thinking here indebted to Veblen?

Ordinarily we think of consumption as a strictly private matter; however, Baudrillard maintains: "The truth about consumption is that it is a function of production and not a function of pleasure, and therefore, like material production, is not an individual function but one that is directly and totally collective" (464).  What is the collective purpose that is realized through "individual" consumption? (It is the same purpose that is realized through production.)

The following paragraph capsulizes the historical transformation that Baudrillard sees as bringing about "consumer society": 

"We don't realize how much the current indoctrination into systematic and organized consumption is the equivalent and the extension, in the twentieth century, of the great indoctrination of rural populations into industrial labor, which occurred throughout the nineteenth century.  The same process of rationalization of productive forces, which took place in the nineteenth century in the sector of production is accomplished, in the twentieth century, in the sector of consumption.  Having socialized the masses into a labor force, the industrial system had to go further in order to fulfill itself and to socialize the masses (that is, to control them) into a force of consumption" (467).  

How does the quote from President Eisenhower, in which he congratulates American consumers on their "efforts" lend support to Baudrillard's conception?

How does "consumption" work against the formation of social solidarity?  How does that help to reinforce "consumer society"?  Do you see any counter-tendencies in the sphere of consumption?

What does Baudrillard mean by suggesting that consumption is "a system of communication"? What is communicated by consumers' behavior? What sorts of messages are embedded in acts of consumption? Who are the intended recipients of those messages? Are the recipients expected to respond in some way to such messages? What does Baudrillard mean by saying that "consumption is a system of meaning, like language, or like the kinship system in primitive societies"?

Baudrillard objects to modern consumerism on the grounds that it constitutes a morality and a "mode of socialization" (466). He also objects to Galbraith's critique of consumerism as "a moralizing idealism" (459). Is Baudrillard's critique itself a kind of moralizing? Is his sudden lapse into talk of "fecal matter" (454) a telling sign of hostility and moralistic indignation against consumer society? Why are Baudrillard's criticisms of consumption to be preferred to those of puritans or humanists? Beyond moralizings of one sort or another, what is wrong with consumption and consumerist self-indulgence? What is objectionable about "a perpetual Springtime" (454)? Why should we decry the loss of seasonal changes and natural cycles? What is wrong with the aesthetic enhancement and artificializing of our environment? Isn't the privileging of "nature" and the "natural" merely an aspect of yet another moralizing discourse (i.e. romanticism)?

Why is Baudrillard so upset about what he perceives as the loss of meaning and differentiation in consumer society? Aren't meaning and differentiation precisely the sorts of culturalizing (moralizing) processes which he seems to be objecting to in the first place? Doesn't he also claim that consumption is a system of meanings and communication? So is consumption a loss or a generating of meaning? Is Baudrillard assuming the existence of meanings which are better than those available within the system of consumption? Aren't all meanings ultimately a structural phenomenon? Could meanings be in any way degraded by the culturalizing of culture (452)? Aren't arbitrariness, conventionality, and tautology inescapable features of all meaning and meaning-generating systems? If so, then what is so upsetting to Baudrillard in the specific meanings created by the consumer system?
 
 

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