On Consumerism and the ‘Logic of Capital’

Abstract

In the West, consumerism and the ‘logic of capital’ gradually become the dominant common ideology and the ‘key logic’ for institution construction and social life, and accordingly, people with money-making as their main pursuit of life turn into the backbone of society. China has also been experiencing such a process of transition since the initiation of ‘reform and opening-up policy’ in 1978, targeting at building a modern property right system and accepting a materialist/consumerist views of value, which took a few centuries in the West. When entering the twenty-first century, it seems clear that people with money-making as their main pursuit of life have finally become the backbone of society, and capital has become the motive power driving all the causes forward. However, the ever worsening global ecological crises caution us that the lifestyle of ‘massive production - massive consumption - massive waste’ stimulated by consumerism have to be changed through a ‘progressive revolution’, if we want to survive on the globe in security. The key for such a revolution lies in the popularisation and wide acceptance of ecological values, which originates not only from the promotion and education by the minor elites, but also from the warning and punishment repeatedly exerted by environmental pollution and ecological degradation.