Affluent society

Affluent society (. Engl affluent society ) called - colloquially often pejoratively - one for material abundance coined for the population at large company . An image for the affluent society is the literary topos of the " land of plenty ". Similar terms are throwaway society , consumer society or affluent society . It must be borne in mind that one of the basic assumptions of the principle of the affluent society assumes that social wealth expands to such an extent that consumer goods , goods and services are ultimately in abundance, which only applies to some countries in the world. The concept of the affluent society has stimulated critics to create new terms for society: Ulrich Beck (1986) on the concept of the risk society , Gerhard Schulze (1993) on that of the adventure society and Peter Gross (1994) on that of the multi-option society.

History of the term

A popular description of the land of milk and honey can be found in 14th century Ireland as the utopian Cokaygne . It was located in the fictional country of Cokanien , west of Spain .

The term of the affluent society was borrowed from an economic work of the American economist John Kenneth Galbraith ("Society in abundance", title of the American original from 1958: "The Affluent Society") and appears only sporadically in sociological or socially critical works but says nothing about its meaning for sociology, as there are a number of terms that mean the same thing in terms of content or are very closely related.

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First ideas of life in a society of abundance and criticism of a decadent life, excessive consumption and excessive luxury are not phenomena of our day, but can already be found in antiquity , whereby one must note that the enjoyment of luxury goods for a long time was reserved for only a small part of the population and the number of products and their technical sophistication seem rather modest compared to today. The life of most people at that time was still characterized by scarcity and shortage, production primarily focused on agriculture and home work and was justified by them, so that, strictly speaking, one cannot speak of an affluent society in today's sense. This only began to develop in the 18th century, when economic and technological progress made enormous leaps, industrial production and manufacturing techniques were introduced and a capitalist economy was converted, which brought about an enormous increase in social prosperity and wealth Prompted philosopher Adam Smith to analyze the social conditions and consequences of economic progress. In his work “Wealth of Nations”, published in 1776, he paints an optimistic picture of economic development, uses his description of pin manufacture to show how an increase in efficiency is made possible and also predicts an increase in the range of goods and an associated increase in wellbeing . It had a great influence on future generations, right down to Marx and Engels , who were opponents of Smith's overall conception, but largely shared his idea of ​​increasing social wealth and prosperity.

The fact that larger population groups also participate in social prosperity and wealth manifests itself as a view only at the end of the 19th century and at the beginning of the 20th century , strengthened by the onset of Fordist mass production, which reinforces the view that with an increase in the supply of consumer goods and goods the chances of individuals gaining access to these goods also increase, and indeed the dream of owning a house, a car or an annual vacation trip is becoming a reality for more and more members of society. This increase in the general standard of living and provision forms the basis and central work concept for the work of Galbraith mentioned at the beginning, in which he works out the extensive participation of the population in production growth and " finally breaks away from the pessimistic tradition in the national economy " (Galbraith, 1959 ; 32). According to his repeatedly repeated statement, the majority of the members of society are not excluded from social prosperity and wealth, but find more and more access to the huge range of goods, whereby he does not want to paint a positive image of the affluent society. The statement of his basic thesis is rather that with the transition to an affluent society a new social order has arisen with new properties, problems and achievements, whereby in his opinion problems result from "that the development of demand lags behind the production requirements and thus, periodically recurring, economic growth crises are triggered "().

The concept of the affluent society is thus characterized by clear ambivalence : in addition to ideas about enhancement, shape and feasibility of the world and progress , it also contains skeptical, thoroughly culturally critical tones, which also explains why this concept is often used in an unmasking form, e.g. . B. to criticize the current society or certain tendencies in it, as did for example Hans Freyer in his work "Theory of the present age" from 1955, in which he denounces that the standard of living has long been the god of the age and the increase of economic production has become its prophet. In particular, left theorists of the so-called Frankfurt School and Western Marxism criticize “ that the mode of production oriented towards progress and increase is dependent on the generation of artificial, ever new needs ”.

Characteristics of the affluent society

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Advanced production and manufacturing techniques

• The mass production of goods and services is only possible when the necessary economic and scientific-technical requirements are met.
• Today's mass production goes beyond pure assembly line production in the Fordist sense: In his book "Die Multioptionsgesellschaft", Gross speaks of a "product individualization" which, thanks to high-tech manufacturing and production forms, allows custom-made manufacture and thus an enormous increase in manufacturing options, because customer requests can already be taken into account during planning and production.

Specific commercialization of consumption

• A large advertising industry uses the mass media to sell consumer goods and services.
• There is a wide range of consumer goods and services that go beyond what is actually needed.
• Consumption habits and forms are changing: The self-service shops that emerged in the 1950s replaced the counter sales that had been common up until then. Michael Wildt criticizes, for example, that this induces customers to buy more than they originally wanted.

Increase in supply and increase in demand capacity

• In order to achieve an increase in the demand capacity, the real income and the free time available to the potential consumer must increase accordingly.

Changed consumption style

• The cultural component of the affluent society: due to an abundant supply of consumer goods and increased income, the longevity of products is becoming less important; In many cases, long-lived products are replaced by short-lived products that are purchased at shorter intervals. This aspect of the affluent society is criticized with the term “ throwaway society ”.
• The cultural-historical cultural research examining typical milieu differences can show that, on the one hand, a "wasteful" style of consumption was occasionally cultivated when any technical-economic basis for mass production was still missing and, on the other hand, a "frugal" style of consumption is retained even if it has not been for a long time there was more material need for it.

Raising the material standard of supply and living

• The increase in production and consumption potential leads to an improvement in general living conditions. However , this does not change the relative social inequality or relative poverty of a society. Ulrich Beck describes this as an “ elevator effect ”, because society as a whole will be taken one floor higher if social inequality remains the same or even worsens.

A society beyond class and class

• Most theorists who deal with the affluent society assume a change in the social structure in such a way that "a continuation or stability of social inequality with a simultaneous change in the relational structure of precisely this inequality" takes place. The change is explained by the fact that by expanding the opportunities for participation for everyone, "processes of social structure dynamization and pluralization" were triggered, the former social order with its clear four or five classes or layers has changed into a dynamic social order in which a large number of different milieus , groups and lifestyles exist.

Environmental problems due to material and energy consumption

• The consumption of resources necessary for production can lead to environmental problems. Examples of this are the ozone hole , the greenhouse effect , the destruction of the rainforests and the associated extinction of species .

The paradox of abundance

• Not only scarcity and shortage can lead to negative results, but also abundance: The rational functioning of technology, economy, science etc., paradoxically, does not have to be rational itself in turn.
• Fred Hirsch describes this phenomenon in his book “The social limits of growth. An economic analysis of the growth crisis ”(1980) as an excess paradox using the example of a traffic jam: here the conditions of use of a good deteriorate due to its high degree of distribution.

Poverty and affluence society

The public awareness of open poverty in the USA came in 1962 through the book by the left-wing Catholic Michael Harrington : The Other America . In a country of 200 million people, he found 50 million poor people who had also escaped social science because social science had assumed that they simply couldn't exist. With the rise of the civil rights movement and the catchphrase of the Great Society under President Lyndon B. Johnson , this previously overlooked aspect of US society finally entered the consciousness of politicians. Gabriel Kolko's thorough study of the distribution of income and wealth found a stable persistence of poverty over several decades, and even a tendency towards the poorer class to grow. Accordingly, Kolko considers the thesis of a medium-sized society to be empirically refuted. The work of Simon Smith Kuznets had often served as the basis for the latter thesis . This study, however, was limited to the 5 percent of the population with the highest per capita income.

A more recent study also states that poverty is a complex phenomenon, the trends and boundaries of which shift over time, measured in absolute terms and in relative terms, for which causes are very difficult to pin down. In principle, however, it should be clear that a solution to the social problem cannot be expected through market processes alone.

Critics of the affluent society like the Indian German scholar Saral Sarkar ( World Economy, Ecology & Development ) see an economism (dominance of the economy) as the basis for the processes of the affluent society. As a countermeasure, Sarkar calls for a refusal to consume .

See also

• Abundance economy

literature

• Fred Hirsch: The Social Limits to Growth. An economic analysis of the growth crisis ; a study by the Twentieth Century Fund (original title: Social Limits to Growth , translated by Udo Rennert), Rowohlt, Reinbek bei Hamburg 1980, ISBN 3-498-02853-7 .
• John Kenneth Galbraith : The Affluent Society , 1958
• Hans Lohmann: Illness or Alienation? Psychological problems in the affluent society. Stuttgart 1978.
• Wolfgang Sachs , Gerhard Scherhorn : Abundance, Abundance Society. In: Joachim Ritter (Hrsg.): Historical dictionary of philosophy. Volume 11. Schwabe, Basel 2001.
• Saral Sarkar: Ecosocialism or ecocapitalism? A critical analysis of humanity's fundamental choices , Zed Books, London / New York 1999.
• Saral Sarkar: The sustainable society. A critical analysis of the system alternatives. Rotpunktverlag, Zurich 2001
• Georg Kneer , Armin Nassehi , Markus Schroer : Classical Society Terms of Sociology , UTB 2010 / Fink, Munich 2001, ISBN 3-8252-2210-1 (UTB) / ISBN 3-7705-3447-6 (Fink).

Individual evidence

1. ↑ George W. Tuma, Dinah Hazell: The Land of Cokaygne. In: sfsu.edu. English Department, San Francisco State University, accessed March 5, 2020 (New English version. In the original Middle English s: en: The Land of Cokaygne on Wikisource ). 
2. ↑ Rolf Cantzen: “Do what you want!” - utopias of freedom. In: radioWissen, Bayerischer Rundfunk. Retrieved March 5, 2020 (texts and audio files). 
3. ↑ Kneer, 2001; 427
4. ↑ Kneer, 2001; 428
5. ↑ Gross 1994; 46
6. ↑ Michael Wild: The Art of Choice. On the development of consumption in West Germany in the 1950s. 1997.
7. ↑ cf. Tanner: Industrialization, rationalization and change in consumer and taste behavior in a European-American comparison. 1997; 583
8. ↑ cf. Andersen: Change of Mentality and Ecological Consequences of Consumerism. The enforcement of consumer society in the fifties. 1997; 763f
9. ↑ Beck 1986; 122
10. ↑ ^{a b} Kneer, 2001; 435
11. ↑ Kneer, 2001; 437
12. ^ Excerpt from Michael Harrington, The Other America ( Memento November 6, 2011 in the Internet Archive ) (NY: Macmillan Publishing Company 1962).
13. ↑ Gabriel Kolko: Possession and Power. Social structure and distribution of income in the USA. edition suhrkamp: Frankfurt 1967. (English: Wealth and Power in America. An Analysis of Social Class and Income Distribution. New York 162, 1964.)
14. ↑ Simon Smith Kuznets: Shares of upper income groups in income and savings. National Bureau of Economic Research, 1953.
15. ^ Wolfgang Müller: Poverty in the affluent society. Sheets for German and International Politics, 2, XIV. Vol., February 1969, pp. 164–175.
16. ^ Ali Modarres: Left Behind by the Market: Investigating the Social Structure of American Poverty. ( Memento of March 27, 2010 in the Internet Archive ) (PDF; 371 kB) Electronic Journal of Sociology (2005). ISSN  1198-3655 , p. 20.
17. ↑ Saral Sarkar: Ecosocialism or ecocapitalism? A critical analysis of humanity's fundamental choices , London / New York (Zed Books) 1999.