Materialism and Postmaterialism

The term materialism refers to a set of values where the individual is primarily concerned with material possessions. Karl Marx used the term materialism to show that the major concern for individuals throughout history has been the acquisition of those goods and services required for survival. However, others such as Russell Belk have shown that in contemporary society individuals have transformed that concern for material security into a more egocentric value set. Such notions are found within consumer cultures where “conspicuous consumption” (Veblen 1994) practices involve the acquisition of more wealth and goods for the outward expression of success. In recent times, however, Ronald Inglehart has proposed that this particular ideal is beginning to fade with intergenerational change as societies across the West develop postmaterialist mind-sets. Inglehart uses statistical research to show that individuals are more inclined to place high value on attributes such as political freedom rather than materialistic concerns.

Materialism, however, was introduced and discussed primarily in the philosophical world and can be identified as the opposite of those transcendentalists, such as William Wordsworth or Henry David Thoreau. Essentially, the argument made by materialist philosophy is that the only true things that exist are matter. Such thoughts reject those who consider supernatural powers to be real, such as a deity. However, the most influential work on materialism emerged with Marx's discussion of historical materialism in the mid-1800s.

For Marx, history can be defined by an underlying social condition, which has always required individuals to satisfy basic human needs. Shelter, food, and clothing have for him been the major concern for societies past and present. Marx critically engaged with this by suggesting that these basic necessities of life have created a unique set of social relations in capitalism. Here, he famously argued that two classes were created, the bourgeois (owners of production—factories, workshops) and the proletariat (those who worked). While the bourgeois increased in wealth and economic security, the proletariat remained poor, barely sustaining the basic needs of life. Thus, the lower classes were more concerned with doing all they could to secure these necessities unlike the bourgeois. Due to the nature of capitalism, though, the only thing that the proletariat had to offer, Marx famously argued, was their labor, which the bourgeois exploited for their own monetary gain.

While concern with the basic necessities of life may have motivated the proletariat in obtaining wealth, the bourgeois or upper classes were also incited to develop their prosperity, albeit for differing reasons. American economist and sociologist Thorstein Veblen in 1899 examined and wrote about the process of emulation among the elite classes. Here, he argued that individuals were encouraged to acquire outward symbols of their economic success to secure higher status and power. This social phenomenon he labeled “conspicuous consumption” [Page 921](Veblen 1994). Veblen proposed further that this ambition to acquire more wealth for status soon began to influence the poorer classes who adopted trends of the higher classes in consumption. These notions underpin the contemporary consumption model where emulation or “keeping up with the Joneses” in material wealth became the motivating principle for individuals in capitalist societies. Belk perhaps extends this by suggesting that materialism in contemporary culture rests on a more self-centered mind-set. He constructed an empirical model where it was revealed that within the West, individuals were becoming more possessive, nongenerous, and envious as consumer culture developed.

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