Consumer society : From making the goods to making the needs

Abstract

As a critical approach to the present society, which we consider as a consumer society, we try to understand the social character of consumption in the almost total absence of production by individuals, especially groups such as the poor and the unemployed who are supposed to struggle for work and not for consumption. In this context, we adopt the approach of Erich Fromm, who considers that capitalism is what produces this social character according to each stage of its development, and thus we conclude, as a result of the research, that the consumer society carries an ideology that is more than the simple satisfaction of basic needs, but rather serves the capital that needs the consumers more than the producers (workers), and politically serves the existing system, because this consumption convinces a person that he is free because he has a lot of freedom to choose between goods while he doesn't think about changing the existing system despite the imbalances that it goes through