Postcapitalism: From Consumer Individualism to Expressive Individualism?

It is proposed to consider the transition to postcapitalism not as the struggle of the oppressed for a more just and equal society without class antagonisms but as a process of gradual displacement of consumer individualism by expressive individualism. Within the framework of this perspective, postcapitalism is not a fundamentally new socioeconomic system built on the ruins of capitalism but a set of social relations developing with the gradual deactualization of materialistic values for a significant part of the population (material wealth, money, etc.) and the growing importance of postmaterialistic values (self-realization, the search for the true self, etc.). In this sense, many phenomena associated with modern identity politics can be attributed to postcapitalism. Nevertheless, this article criticizes the perception of identity politics as a set of strategies and ways of fighting for equality and justice, presented as an approximation to the ideals of socialism or communism (the so-called overcoming of "systemic oppression"). Today, the struggle for diverse identities testifies to the triumph of individualism, as well as a new round of the "war of all against all" and the destruction of the common lifeworld. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]