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.
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Notes
- 1.
According to Time and Forbes, Hernando de Soto is one of the most appealing reformers in the world.
- 2.
When we say that “the ‘logic of capital’ is a definition, a tautology”, the word “logic” was used in a logic sense, while in other context it has its extended meaning, such as the principle which restraining people’s activities. ‘And here it means it has become the instructions for many persons’ activities that “let your money keep proliferating continuously”.
- 3.
The enactment of Property Law in 2007 should be regarded as the milestone of constructing modern property rights system in China.
- 4.
Actually materialist and consumerist culture has also prescribed the criteria of refinement in life and art, and the shallow materialists and consumerists are imperative to contempt about those like Thoreau, just as the high-end car owners probably look down upon the bicycle riders in today’s China.
- 5.
The views of value of economism, consumerism and materialism mold the modern system in an exclusively secrete fashion. In a democratic society, those aiming to earn money in their lives have become the backbone of the society and can exert their will on the system through democratic procedures, while the giants in business can accomplish the mission in a more underground way.
- 6.
If a consumerist proclaims to believe in Christianity, he probably looks forward to wealth as well as the heaven, which are not contradictory to each other in the protestant ethics expounded by Max Weber.
- 7.
Democracy can certainly not be separated from economic freedom, however, it might not be the case for its relation with capitalism.
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Lu, F. (2010). On Consumerism and the ‘Logic of Capital’. In: Huan, Q. (eds) Eco-socialism as Politics. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-90-481-3745-9_6
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