The New Revolutionary Agent Of The Postmodern Era Consumericus Libertarian

After the Second World War, economic liberalism was promoted i.e. ideas advocating free trade, and the non-intervention of government in supply and demand through methods such as tariffs to protect local economies. Supranational markets transcending borders (European Union, Mercosur, NAFTA, etc) were established.

While in the U.S. the libidinal and mercantile lifestyle intrinsic to neoliberal capitalism was already deeply rooted in the culture. Old Europe, still imprinted by traditional values withstood the American way of life.

However, neoliberal capitalism, to survive had to find new outlets for the consumption of overproduced manufactured goods inherent to its system. So, with mass culture, a veritable cultural colonization spread all over the world.

In Western Europe, the Marshall Plan, the initiative to provide aid to avoid communism and restore the economic infrastructure of postwar Europe, turned out to be neoliberal capitalism's Trojan horse. Indeed, in return, to increase and maintain the U.S. influence, Western Europe was required to open its market to American cultural goods such as film productions (the soft power), to import en masse an ideology “made in the USA”, new consumption patterns through music, fashion, cinema, etc.

Furthermore, the triumph of the Frankfurt School paradigm (the constant critique of traditional structures) among the bourgeois youth in the ’60s paved the way for the success of neoliberal capitalism.

Certainly, Apex Egalitarianism, the negation of particularisms and cultural variations, is a universalism. And the deconstruction of traditional values an atomization of the social corpus. Similarly, neoliberal capitalism thrives on globalization and individualization.

Besides, the sexual revolution consecrated the promotion of deviant lifestyles, frivolity, and transgression. A (sexual) emancipation that the neoliberal capitalism system, flourishing on the festive and wasteful way of life regurgitated with the marketing of libidinous goods i.e. the transgressive consumption.

Erich Fromm, a sociologist and psychologist affiliated with the Frankfurt School, planted the intellectual foundations of sexual liberation in his work “The Art of Loving” (1956). Although his essay is not specifically an apology for free love, it was often wielded as the basis for the academic justification of the sexual emancipation movements of the ’60s.

Fromm is also commonly credited as a precursor of gender theory due to the chapter “Sex and Character”. In his essay “The Dogma of Christ: And Other Essays on Religion, Psychology and Culture” published in 1943, he postulated that masculinity and femininity are not a reflection of essential (biological) sexual distinctions but derive from differences in functions that are partly socially determined.

The Art of Loving sold 25 million copies worldwide. It was banned within the Soviet Union, accused of being an obscene book, and wrongly regarded as a self-help title for courtship in the Western world.

In truth, Fromm attempted to analyze the social reality of the world by combining Marx economic determinism and Freud theory of the unconscious and wrote in 1960 “Let Man Prevail: A Socialist Manifesto and Program” for the Socialist Party-Social Democratic Federation.

Undoubtedly, Erich Fromm influenced the Frankfurt School’s research agenda, but he left following tensions with Max Horkheimer and Theodor W. Adorno after questioning the institute's Freudian orthodoxy about libido and human sexuality.

Controversially, in place of Freud’s idea that erotic satisfaction is life’s driving force, Fromm suggested that our goals in existence are relatedness, rootedness, identity, a frame of orientation (or object of devotion), and transcendence (or agency).

Still, his work served to conceptualize the transformation of the classical Marxism class-based analysis and concern for the emancipation of the proletariat into Freudian emancipation from bourgeois torments of sexual liberation.

Accordingly, the ’60s revolutions left behind the collective emancipation and fate of the working classes to focus on considerations about the way of life, personal values, and individual fulfillment. The economic and historic determination became secondary issues and the social and collective matters faded away in favor of societal concerns.

Despite the slogans, those revolutions did not aim to end capitalism but to a society perceived as traditionalist and archaic. They symbolized the collusion between libertarians, the advocates of the unlimited enjoyment, the “carpe diem”, the “do as you will”, and the promoters of the liberal economy.

The benefactors were the new bourgeois and middle classes as opposed to the traditional bourgeoisie by their culture and world view, codes; a new social class consisting of engineers, teachers, managers, technicians ... academic petite bourgeoisie whose capital is the intellect (diplomas). A new social class who played a more important role in society at the cultural level … they were the students educated at universities with the Frankfurt School and postmodernism thinker's ideologies.

Radicalized in the ’60s threatening the government with the civil rights movement (anti-racism, feminism, anti-homophobia), this new bourgeoisie reached power in the ’70s thanks to the progressive replacement of “the social” by “the societal” in politics. Their alliance with the possessing classes (traditional bourgeoisie) consecrated the rise of a society that operates on desire in which “freedom” is reduced to “fulfilling desires”, and “fulfilling desires” is reduced to the act of purchasing.

Besides, the sexual revolution brought a lot of nocuous consequences. Loneliness with divorce and celibacy, narcissism with the market of seduction, and failure to transition to adulthood with the rejection of parenthood.

With the deconstruction of historical culture and transcendent order (religion, nation, family, etc), individuals lost their classical and ethical reference points. Nothing remained between them and their selfish motives, their personal desires. Furthermore, mass culture and neoliberal capitalism filled the void left by religion. Materialism replaced morality. Money became a common value.

The atomization of the social corpus and individualism in the society that ensued contributed to the explosion of psychological health issues such as depression and anxiety. Neurotic postmodern deconstructed individuals turned to the consumption of manufactured goods to reconstruct their identity. Submissive to their instinctive lustful impulses knowing no boundaries, they fulfilled their desires with transgressive consumption. The act of purchasing understood as an emancipation from the traditional Western value somehow became a revolutionary deed.

Marcuse thought that minorities would substitute the working class as agents of the revolution. Already in 1965, Erich Fromm wrote in “Socialist Humanism” about Homo consumens, whose main goal is to consume more and more to compensate for his inner vacuity, passivity, loneliness, and anxiety.

In truth, the libertarian consumer born from the ’60s civil rights movement, Homo consumericus libertarian, came out to be the new revolutionary agent that carries the promise of emancipation.

The satisfaction of Homo consumericus libertarian selfish motives and his search for instant gratification were expressed in the form of unethical consumption. His desires took precedence over the good of the community. Asserting his particular rights at the detriment of the collective, Homo consumericus libertarian subjects its pairs to the worst of what the neoliberal capitalist system has to offer: exploitation (low wages, long hours, mass redundancy, social dumping), environmental pollution (waste, toxicity, disposable mentality), the commodification of the body (surrogacy) etc.

The societal libertarian ideology of the new left, born from the deconstruction doctrine promoted by the postmodernist philosophers of the Frankfurt School and French theory, was nothing more than a fast lane toward the submission to the neoliberal capitalist system. It has encouraged the deregulation of the economy and inequalities between those who own the means of production and the workers who only own their labor capability.

Homo consumericus libertarian the new revolutionary agent of the postmodern revolution transpired to be the objective ally of neoliberal capitalism.