Consumption in Contemporary Capitalism: Beyond Marx and Veblen - A Comment

Abstract

In his reassessment of contemporary consumption, McIntyre ultimately appeals an approach that proceeds seeing utility and price as mutually conditioning (1992, p. 59). It must be observed that this is a bizarre conclusion irrespective of the route by which it has been attained. First, although this is by no means intended, there is a striking parallel with supply and demand, or at least two sides simultaneously interacting as determinants. These appear be the economy and the more broadly social -- to separate pecuniary and aesthetic aspects of the commodity is helpful in interpreting the complexity of meaning that each commodity conveys. This is offered as an alternative the different essentialisms be found in Marx (bearer of needs and possessor of labour power) and Veblen (emulation, distinction and workmanship) -- although the essentialisms of class and exploitation are retained. There seems much that is arbitrary here, and the final recourse utility and price, as representative of the aesthetic and the pecuniary, would appear, in principle, be all-embracing. As the song suggests, written as America entered the modern consumer society, anything goes. The second unusual aspect of the conclusion wedding price utility as explanatory factors is that, while price is broadly a socially and historically specific category, germane commodity producing societies, the same is not so of utility, which is an entirely ahistorical and asocial category. The tempting question is, what are the determinants of consumption in the absence of price -- utility alone? This is all the more unusual since McIntyre is at pains rake over the coals those who use ahistorical essentialisms in their theories of consumption. McIntyre is particularly, and correctly, scathing over the posited opposition between false and real needs -- although his enthusiasm provide secure analytical foundations is, perhaps, carried too far in the failure recognize how such concepts can be employed for polemical and moral purposes.(2) The argument here is that McIntyre's failure deal with the logical, and historical and social, position of the categories already mentioned leads him misrepresent Marx's analysis of consumption and the potential for a more fully developed Marxist theory of consumption.(3) Indeed, while this is less serious in the case of Veblen's theory of consumption, McIntyre adopts a stereotyped view of both Marx and Veblen in which they are judged according the extent that they match up his own view and are seen fail, although Veblen scores better than Marx. Such an approach clearly involves overlooking the treatment of consumption where it differs from that of McIntyre, and such a superficial reading has been compounded by casual reference the texts concerned. Consider, first, the distinction between production and consumption, and other economic moments such as distribution. McIntyre simply seems take these as (ahistorically) given. But this is far from the case (see the discussion in the Grundrisse) and, as revealed in the distinction between slavery and capitalism, what may be production in one mode of production (humans themselves) may lie outside production in another (and be associated with social reproduction). For similar reasons, the distinction between productive and final consumption is itself only defined relative a particular mode of production. A slave's consumption, from the perspective of an owner, is indistinguishable from the productive consumption of a mule or, in modern tees, the fuel that runs a machine! The failure address this issue seems lie behind McIntyre's use of the terms utility and use-value interchangeably. In today's parlance utility is associated almost entirely with final consumption of the optimising individual, but use-value within classical political economy merely signifies the (material) properties of objects that enable them be put use. …