UDC

101.1:316

Authors

Ekaterina A. Vasilovskaya
Krasnoyarsk State Agrarian University
117 Lenina St., Krasnoyarsk, 660017, Russian Federation;
 e-mail: catharsis09@yandex.ru

Abstract

The paper presents an attempt to explain the historical origins of anti-consumerism from the standpoint of axiology and N. Luhmann’s concept of autopoiesis. The purpose of this article was to identify the conditions of the emergence of anti-consumerist ideology in the mid-twentieth century and the generated by it social practices at the individual and social levels. As an axiological factor of anticonsumerism this paper considers the phenomenon of ressentiment (on the basis of F. Nietzsche’s and M. Scheler’s conceptions), and as a socio-systemic factor, autopoiesis of the consumer society. The article also shows the connection between ressentiment and the middle class, as well as the creative nature and importance of ressentiment in the formation of new values in the consumer society, and the link between the intensity of anti-consumerist movement and strengthened chain of authority. The author believes that the phenomenon of ressentiment evolved and spread widely during the Reformation (16th – 17th centuries), when the capitalist system started to develop. At the same time, anti-consumerism is regarded as autopoiesis of the consumer society, i.e. it is formed by the system of consumption in order for the society to reproduce itself, which explains the failure of the counterculture movement to effectively oppose the consumer society. Further, this paper looks at the mechanisms of neutralization of social movements (youth subcultures taken as an example) by the autopoietic system. In addition, some theoretical predictions regarding the future of the consumer society are analysed and a conclusion is made that its continued existence is uncertain due to capitalism’s internal structural crisis.

Keywords

anti-consumerism, consumer society, axiology, ressentiment, autopoiesis, anti-capitalist movement

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