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In The High Price of Materialism, Tim Kasser argues that materialism-or the pursuit of wealth, possessions, or fame-is incapable of providing "true" happiness. Kasser's contention is empirical rather than a moral exhortation to live for "higher" intellectual or spiritual purposes. In attacking somewhat vague notions of capitalism, Kasser promotes the possibility of change to a society supported by and supporting nonmaterialist values. Kasser provides scientistic ammunition in the debate against the contention that capitalism and wealth accumulation lead to the optimization of both personal and social welfare. However, the book fails to answer the most significant question it poses: "if the promises of materialism are (and have always been) so empty, how is it so hegemonically powerful (and reproducible) on both a personal and social level?
Keywords: Materialism, Accumulation of Wealth, Marxism, Exploitation, Surplus Value
Starting with its title, this book resembles many centuries of moralistic and clerical arguments that the pursuit of ever more wealth, possessions, and fame never has delivered true happiness or well-being to the pursuers. That pursuit is what Kasser means by "materialist values" or materialism, which he contrasts with nonmaterialist values focused on personal happiness and relatedness to others and nature. Because the author is a determinedly scientific professor of psychology, his idiom is not primarily moral and not at all clerical. The book summarizes an impressive mass of recent empirical work-where materialist and nonmaterialist values are defined, debated, quantified, and statistically related-published mostly in scientific journals and books. For Kasser, this work proves that materialism is statistically correlated with personal problems (unhappiness, lack of autonomy, inauthenticity, alienation, and so on) and also with social problems (environmental degradation, decline of community, and so on). He concludes that materialism makes promises to people that are "false" and delivers satisfactions that are "empty" (27).
Kasser does not hesitate to refer to "capitalism," "large corporations," and "consumer culture" as the social forces promoting materialism, but the references are very few, vague, and general. Likewise, he...