The Affluent Society

Affluent society (English affluent society ) called - colloquially often pejoratively - one of material abundance coined for the population at large society.

History of the term

The concept of an affluent society was an economics work of the American economist John Kenneth Galbraith borrowed ( "Company in abundance ", title of the American original from 1958: " The Affluent Society " ) and emerged in sociological or socio -critical works only occasionally, but says nothing about its importance for sociology, as there are a number of terms that, from her content, the same my and yet are very strong artverwandt, such as throw-away society, consumer society, or affluent society, and whose entry frequently occurs in such writings. It must also be borne in mind that one of the basic assumptions of the principle of abundance Company believes that the social wealth to such extends that consumer goods, goods and services are available finally in abundance, which is probably shared by many authors as a basic assumption, and no further, explicit reference to the concept of the affluent society of them is made.

First ideas of life in a society of abundance and critique of a decadent life, over-consumption and exaggerated luxury are no phenomena of our days, but can already be found in the ancient world, where you have to note here is that the ancient world was a small, the consumption of luxury goods for a long time was only a small section of the population and yet seem the number of products and their technical sophistication compared to today rather modest. The lives of most people of the time was marked by scarcity and shortage, the production directed primarily on agriculture and home working and motivated by them, so that, strictly speaking, of an affluent society in the modern sense really can not be spoken. Such began only in the 18th century out to form, as the economic and technological progress made ​​enormous strides, industrial production and manufacturing techniques have been introduced and has been converted to a capitalistic economy, which brought an enormous increase of social prosperity and wealth with them and the philosopher Adam Smith led the analysis of the social conditions and consequences of economic progress. In his 1776 published book " Wealth of Nations ", he designed an optimistic picture of economic development, shows with his description of the pin factory, as a gain in efficiency is possible, and also predicts an increasing product selection and a concomitant increase well-being. It had great influence on future generations, to Marx and Engels, the opponents of the overall design of Smith were true, but largely shared his idea for the propagation of social wealth and prosperity.

That larger populations of societal wealth and riches participate, manifests itself as conception until the end of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th century, strengthened by the onset of Fordist mass production, which reinforces the view that with increase in the supply of consumer goods and goods the chances of a rise of access, and in fact, the dream of owning a house, car or the annual holiday travel for more and more members of society a reality. This increase in the general life and standards of care forms the basis and key work design for the first -mentioned work of Galbraith, in which he elaborates the extensive participation of the population in production growth and "final of the pessimistic tradition in economics solves " ( Galbraith, 1959, 32 ). After his constantly repeated statement, the majority of members of society is not excluded from social prosperity and wealth, but is gaining access to the huge range of goods, which he does not want to only paint a positive picture of the affluent society. The statement of his basic thesis is rather the that with the transition to an affluent society, a new social order is created with new features, problems and achievements, which in his view, problems result from the fact that "the development of the demand lags behind the production requirements and therefore, periodically recurring, economic growth crises are triggered " ().

The concept of an affluent society is thus characterized by a very ambivalence: except ideas about enhancement, shape and feasibility in the world and progress he has also skeptical, quite culturally critical tones, which also explains why this concept is also often used in more revealing form to z. example, to mount a critique of contemporary society or certain tendencies in it, as, for example, Hans Freyer has done " theory of the present age " of 1955 in his work, in which he denounces that the standard of living far to the God of the age and the increase of economic production had become its prophet. In particular, left theorists of so-called Frankfurt School and Western Marxism criticize "that focused on progress and increase of production was dependent on the generation of artificial, always new needs ".

It remains to notice that the concept of an affluent society has lost nothing of its timeliness and its explosiveness today and has inspired three critics to the creation of new social terms, the content strongly referring to said one way or another to the concept of an affluent society Ulrich Beck ( 1986) to the concept of risk society, Gerhard Schulze (1993 ) on the experience society and Peter Gross (1994 ) on the multi-option society.

Characteristics of the affluent society

• The mass production of goods and services is only possible if the necessary economic and scientific- technical requirements are met.
• Today's mass production goes beyond a mere Production Line in the Fordist sense also: Gross says in his book " The multi-option society " to a " product individualization ," which, thanks to high-technology manufacturing and production forms, a made ​​to measure and therefore an enormous increase in production options allowed because customer requirements as may be considered at the planning and production.

• An extensive advertising industry uses the mass media to consumer goods and services to sell.
• There is a wide range of consumer goods and services that go beyond the actual needs.
• The consumption habits and forms of change: The arisen in the 50s -markets came off the hitherto usual counter sales. To this end, Michael Wildt criticized, for example, that this verleite the customers to buy more than they originally wanted.

• To achieve an increase in the demand capacity, have real incomes and the free time available to the potential consumers available, rise accordingly.

• The cultural component of the affluent society: through an ample supply of consumer goods and an increased income loses the longevity of products in importance; many durable products are replaced by shorter intervals acquired, short-lived products. This aspect of the affluent society is criticized with the concept of "throwaway society."
• The milieu typical differences be examined cultural history culture research can show that for a few a " wasteful " consumption style has been maintained as yet lacked any technical- economic foundations for mass production and on the other a " fuel efficient " style of consumption is also still preserved when long since ceased to material necessity more on that was.

• The increase of production and consumption potential leads to an improvement of the general living conditions. The relative social inequality or relative poverty of a society, however, this does not change. Ulrich Beck refers to this as a " lift " effect, because the whole society will one floor down higher while maintaining or even intensifying, social inequality.

• Most theorists, who deal with the affluent society, expect a change in the social structure in the way that " a continuation and stability of social inequality at the same time changing the relational structure precisely this inequality " takes place. The change is explained by the fact that were triggered by the expansion of participation opportunities for everyone " social structural dynamization and Pluralisierungsvorgänge ," the former social order with its clear four or five classes or layers have been transformed into a dynamic social order in which a variety exist from different backgrounds, groups and lifestyles.

• The necessary production resources can cause environmental problems. Examples of this are the ozone hole, the greenhouse effect, the destruction of the rainforest and the concomitant extinction of species.

• Not only shortages and malnutrition can lead to negative results, but also the abundance: " The rational functioning of technology, economics, science, etc. must, paradoxically, can not itself be rational ."
• Fred Hirsch describes this phenomenon in his book "The Social Limits to Growth. An economic analysis of the growth crisis "(1980 ) as the abundance paradox using the example of a traffic jam: here the conditions of use of a good deteriorate due to its high circulation level.

Poverty in an affluent society

Public awareness of the open poverty in the U.S. in 1962 came through the book of left-wing Catholics Michael Harrington: The Other America. He found in a country of 200 million inhabitants, 50 million poor, who were also escaped the social science because it had assumed that it simply can not exist. With the rise of the civil rights movement and the slogan of the Great Society under President Lyndon B. Johnson, also joined this hitherto overlooked aspect of U.S. society to the attention of politicians.

Other work previously had been published, which had excited less attention, probably because they were not politically prepared soil. To find the thorough investigation of Gabriel Kolko on the income and wealth distribution over several decades a stable persistence of poverty, and even more of a tendency to increase in poorer layer. Consequently, Kolko holds the thesis of a middle-class society for empirically refuted. As a basis for the latter thesis often the work of Simon Kuznets Smith had hergehalten. This study had, however, limited to 5 percent of the population with the highest per capita income.

Also, a recent study finds that poverty is a complex phenomenon, over the time, measured in absolute standards as in relative move respects the trends and limits what causes are but to make very difficult to pin down. Basically, however, it should be clear that a solution of the social problem could not be expected solely by market processes.

Critics of the affluent society like the Indian Germanist Saral Sarkar (World Economy, Ecology & Development ) see a economism ( dominance of the economy) as the basis for the processes of an affluent society. Sarkar calls for the rejection of consumerism as a countermeasure.