Commodification and the Counterculture

I think we need to investigate the relationship between commodification and the counterculture a little deeper.

First off, what is the difference between a dominant culture, a subculture and a counterculture?

Simplified sociological definitions:

Dominant Culture: The values, beliefs, norms that maintain the ruling social, economic, and political interests.

Subculture: Segment of society whose values, beliefs, and norms differ from that of the dominant.

Counter Culture: A subculture whose values, beliefs and norms deliberately oppose those of the dominant culture.

The relationship between commodification and counterculture also raises several key questions which could guide research and understanding of this relationship. Questions that link the individual and culture, the individual and the social structure, ones that address the interrelationship between consumption and identity:

Why do people rebel/What causes rebellion?
How is rebellion commodified?
How does commodification affect the rebellion? Its goals and aims?
Does commodified rebellion address social issues that underlie the rebellion?
Has rebellion become individualized, rather than a social movement?
Why has rebellion been individualized, if it has?

I believe what has been lost in the ongoing debate within research on consumer culture and the argument over the consumer as dupe or the consumer as sovereign is a middle ground that addresses both the desires and identity of the individual and the requirements of capitalism for profit maximization – how it uses these identity needs in its such for profit (I believe this middle ground has been taken by some but does not seem to be overwhelming)

This angle is the product of William Fritz Haug and his book Critique of Commodity Aesthetics: Appearance, Sexuality, and Advertising in Capitalist Society.

Haug argues that commodity aesthetics is

a complex which springs from the commodity form of the products and which is functionally determined by EV – a complex of material phenomena and of the sensual subject-object relations conditioned by these phenomena (P.7).

For Haug commodity aesthetics has two main parts, (1) signifying beauty – appearance appealing to the senses and (2) a beauty developed in the service of the realization of EV – commodities designed to stimulate in the onlooker the desire to posses and the impulse to buy (P.8).

Commodity aesthetics is born from capital’s demands for valorization, a demand and a process which is encumbered through the process of exchange – where a seller attempts to unload a commodity in the search of exchange-value and a buyer attempts to use money to obtain a use-value. This process of exchange is key for capital to obtain profit, for without exchange profit would not be realized. So in an attempt to increase consumption and therefore the profit levels of corporations, as well as an attempt to decrease the time between production and consumption, commodity aesthetics is born. For the whole purpose of commodity aesthetics is to give the appearance of use-value to its commodities so that individuals will part with their money.

“The aesthetic abstraction of the commodity detaches itself from the object acting as a carrier of exchange-value and makes the two available separately (P.50)”

Appearance is detached from the material form and quality of the commodity and is embellished and altered for means of deception – promising what it is not.

“At first form and surface are merely separated – the form being cheapened while the surface appears of a higher quality or quantity. But then its image is splintered from the commodity itself – fed through the mass media – and arrives to the individual before the formal commodity every does (P.50).”

The disassociation of the commodity object and commodity image has occurred.

It is within this discussion of commodity aesthetics that Haug lays out his thesis of manipulation:

“that manipulation can only be effective if it somehow latched on to the objective interests of those being manipulated (P.6).”

The masses, he argues, are being manipulated while pursuing their interests. If we take Haug’s work as legitimate and true than I think his argument ties in well with an attempt to understand the ongoing sub-culture and counterculture pandemic among advertising and marketing. His manipulation thesis ties together the economic system and the individual’s identity needs.

Working with the arguments that individuals crave a meaningful existence and the desire for uniqueness and distinction, all attributes that can be provided by belonging to a subculture or counterculture, I would argue that when individuals consume commodities that are to provide one with or facilitate their belonging to a sub- or counterculture they sincerely believe that these commodities will bring their desires or dreams into reality. They believe commodity consumption will meet their identity needs and provide them with happiness.

However, I would argue that commodified rebellion must work within the existing property relations of capital, of bourgeois private property. As a result, in consumer culture sub-cultural components or counterculture rebellion must be individualized. It must become “image” and/or “style.” It must become removed from the political process and social movements - reduced to an image or collection of signs. Primarily because social movements affect the political and economic systems and therefore have qualitative social and economic change potential – which is a potential disaster for the power elite, but also this reduction to image or style occurs do to the logic of the market – which presupposes commodification and individuation – that the market is the answer to all your “individualized” problems.

Consequently, rebellion has become hip or cool based on both the needs of the individual and capital. Therefore, rebellion is commodified to sell as identity components, as something to display on your shelf - look I’m different, I’m not a corporate tool. Rebellion has been subsumed under the demands of the fashion system – its image obliterated from its meaning and social context to become an ahistorical entity, reduced to merely one “style” among many, one choice of life among a plethora of other lifestyles that the market can provide to you, if you can afford it.

Working off the belief that individuals are indeed being manipulated, as the market fails to follow through on the use-value of commodities – they fail to actually provide happiness and rebellion, then the question becomes, how can a radical aesthetic seek to change society through individualized consumption? Is this possible? Can a radical aesthetic work within the confines of the society that is it apart of – can it use commodified leisure time to its advantage, can it use the logic of capital to its own advantage to bring about a revolution in the social order of society. Can an aesthetic be introduced into the market via commodities that would facilitate social movements to alter the political and economic system?