I would like to preface by saying I am very sorry if this is the wrong community. This post touches on the core philosophy of Marxism, and I was hoping to get some insight.
My friend claims that the only reason companies produce things is because the working class, regular citizens, are asking for it; he does not get behind the idea of companies subconsciously persuading people to buy the items they sell. He believes that because your regular person wants a new phone, kitchen equipment, clothes, whatever - they are pushing capitalism forward and therefore it is the right / natural system.
How would you reason? I feel conflicted. On one hand, people do want things and there is almost always something to produce it for them, but on the other hand companies are steadily pushing for profit, using various tactics to drive consumerism. I would appreciate what you guys think and what you would answer, because according to him, capitalism only exists because demand exists. Whether that's true or not, I hope we can discuss. Cheers!
It’s a mix, IMO. There’s tons of stuff pushed by companies to get you to buy things you didn’t even know existed. There’s tons of stuff that companies force you to buy by unbundling products. There’s products you essentially must have to get by in a modern society.
There’s plenty of manipulation of desire by companies. That’s what advertising is. Doesn’t matter how it’s done, via conventional ads or product placement in movies or products talked about by influencers. You may not have known about or wanted something, but they’re going to do their best to make you want it and buy it. This is probably the biggest facet of the argument. Companies are always trying to make you buy what they’re selling whether you need it or not, and there’s nothing subconscious about it. They’re in your face as much as they can manage. They want you to see it, but whether or not you recognize it as deliberate or not is worth mentioning. They spend millions to find out how much they can charge, how artificial scarcity could manipulate pricing, how long a product should last before the next iteration shows up they want you to buy or not piss off the buyer when it fails and they need to replace it.
There’s plenty of stuff you can’t really do too well without in society, like a mobile phone or car, so I’m not sure if I could reasonably argue about these kinds of items because of their necessity. You’re going to buy something like this, the only question is which company’s marketing wins and the $ in your pocket.
Pushing capitalism… that’s a question of who is in charge of the system. While there may be some hypothetical debate over what could happen in an ideal system with honest players who each ideally exercise their abilities in the system, the reality is that the consumer has little to no control over capitalism.
Capitalism is driven by billion- and trillion-dollar mega corporations that control what you see, hear, eat, wear, drink, drive, and every other facet of your life that interacts with products of any sort. That’s just the direct attempts. We haven’t even gotten to you seeing what your friends are wearing, what they’re driving, what they are watching, etc. That influences the viewer as well. Companies are constantly striving to dictate what you want to buy and working hard to extract the maximum price the market will bear. They want you in their walled garden. Sure, the consumer might have a hand in directing trends, maybe occasionally get a product to fail due to popularity or poor function, but overall the consumer has little hand in consciously directing what companies make. I think your friend really hand-waves away the amount of effort and money companies spend to make you want to buy, and buy their products. IMO they’re not being honest about that.
Lastly, I think the whole idea of capitalism exists because demand is sort of false because it assumes that capitalism is the only way to do it. I’m not going to argue for any other system, but it’s patently obvious that before capitalism sort of became the default that products and services were generated and traded or bartered for over centuries. It’s just that regulated capitalism does it faster and more efficiently for more people.