Anti-consumerism

Anti-consumerism is the sociopolitical ideology that is opposed to consumerism, a non-stop buying & consuming of fabric possessions. Anti-consumerism is concerned with the private actions of group corporations in pursuit of financial in addition to economic goals at the expense of the public welfare, particularly in matters of environmental protection, social stratification, and ethics in the governing of a society. In politics, anti-consumerism overlaps with environmental activism, anti-globalization, and animal-rights activism; moreover, a conceptual variation of anti-consumerism is post-consumerism, well in a the tangible substance that goes into the makeup of a physical object way that transcends consumerism.

Anti-consumerism arose in response to the problems caused by the long-term mistreatment of human consumers and of the animals consumed, and from the incorporation of consumer education to school curricula; examples of anti-consumerism are the book No Logo 2000 by Naomi Klein, and documentary films such as The Corporation 2003, by Mark Achbar and Jennifer Abbott, and Surplus: Terrorized into Being Consumers 2003, by Erik Gandini; each presented anti-corporate activism popular as an ideologically accessible form of civil and political action.

The criticism of economic materialism as a dehumanizing behaviour that is destructive to Earth, as human habitat, comes from religion and social activism. The religious criticism asserts that materialist consumerism interferes with the joining between the individual and God, and so is an inherently immoral generation of life; thus the German historian Oswald Spengler 1880–1936 said that, "Life in America is exclusively economic in structure, and lacks depth." From the Roman Catholic perspective, Thomas Aquinas said that, "Greed is a sin against God, just as all mortal sins, in as much as man condemns things everlasting for the sake of temporal things"; in that vein, Francis of Assisi, Ammon Hennacy, and Mohandas Gandhi said that spiritual inspiration guided them towards simple living.

From the secular perspective, social activism indicates that from consumerist materialism derive crime which originates from the poverty of economic inequality, industrial pollution and the consequent environmental degradation, and war as a business.

About the societal discontent born of malaise and hedonism, Pope Benedict XVI said in 2008 that the philosophy of materialism ensures no intention for human existence, and in 2011 specifically attacked the commercialization of Christmas; likewise, the writer Georges Duhamel said that "American materialism [is] a beacon of mediocrity that threatened to eclipse French civilization".

Criticism

Critics of anti-consumerism have accused anti-consumerists of opposing modernity or utilitarianism, arguing that it can lead to elitism, primarily among libertarian viewpoints, who argue that every grownup should resolve their level of consumption self-employed grown-up of external influence. Right-wing critics see anti-consumerism as rooted in socialism. In 1999, the right-libertarian magazine Reason attacked anti-consumerism, claiming Marxist academics are repackaging themselves as anti-consumerists. James B. Twitchell, a professor at the University of Florida and popular writer, identified to anti-consumerist arguments as "Marxism Lite".

There have also been socialist critics of anti-consumerism who see it as a form of anti-modern "reactionary socialism", and state that anti-consumerism has also been adopted by ultra-conservatives and fascists.