A POSTCAPITALIST PARADIGM: THE COMMON GOOD OF ...

media have become real experts in ‘manufacturing consent’. 37 It should
be no surprise that even short after the obvious debacles in Afghanistan
en Iraq the elite has succeeded almost without problem to convince
public opinion for a new military adventure. If that is true for going to
war it’s also true for the discussion on the common good of humanity.
The manufacturing of taste and identity
Normally one should expect that an economy produces what consumers
need or desire. But capitalism has inverted this order. The production is
orientated on the maximisation of profit of producers and not on the
needs of consumers. That encourages the production of superfluous
goods and inexpensive commodities of low quality that are frequently
replaced. The result is the tyranny of fashion cycles, a throwaway culture
and the piling up of waste. 38 But it goes very much beyond the moulding
of taste. The very identity of man is affected by this inversion. Like God
in the bible Capital created a New Man and a New Woman in his own
image. A Man or Women in which the mode of having prevails over the
mode of being. The identity of the New Man is being sought through
products. 39 In order to fabricate the New Man and Woman a veritable
industry of seduction has been set up: marketing and advertising. This
catering of our subliminal and irrational desires can be considered as the
Air Force of capitalism. One has to realize that the total marketing expenses
even exceeds the military spending worldwide. 40
37 Herman E. & Chomsky N., Manufacturing Consent. The Political Economy of the
Mass Media, New York, 1988.
38 Dawson M., The consumer trap: big business marketing in American life, Illinois
2003, p. 132v; Foster J., Clark B. & York R., The Ecological Rift. Capitalism’s War on
the Earth, New York 2010, p. 394; Dierckxsens W., op. cit., p. 29.
39 Fromm E., To Have or To Be?, London 1976; Hedges C., ‘The Collapse of Globalization’,
March 27, 2011,
http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/the_collapse_of_globalization_20110328/.
40 Exact and recent dates are hard to find. UNDP calculated that global advertising
expenditure in 1998 was more than 3% of world GDP. Today that would mean
about $1.8000 bn. UDNP, Human Development Report 1998, New York 1998, p.
63. And that’s just about advertising. Dawson puts that the US on its own expends
about $2.000 bn. Dawson M., op. cit., p. 1, footnote 1.
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