The Value Foundations of Post-Capitalism: From the "Mode of Having" to the Individualism of Self-Actualizing Personalities?
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The Value Foundations of Post-Capitalism: From the "Mode of Having" to the Individualism of Self-Actualizing Personalities?
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PII
S013216250017623-8-1
Publication type
Article
Status
Published
Authors
Dmitriy Davydov 
Affiliation: Institute of Philosophy and Law of the Ural Branch of RAS, Yekaterinburg
Address: Russian Federation, Yekaterinburg
Edition
Pages
232-241
Abstract

The article raises the question of the possible value foundations of a post-capitalist society. The author criticizes attempts to associate post-capitalism exclusively with the values of friendship, cooperation, solidarity, voluntary action for the benefit of others, etc. The article examines how getting rid of material necessity led Western societies to deepen individualism and spread all kinds of self-expression practices. Moreover, with the development of social media, these practices have increasingly spilt over into a struggle to attract attention. Personalities turn into something that is “produced” (practices of "self-branding"), is designed, promoted and scaled. As a result, instead of the expected “communism of knowledge” and the corresponding communitarian social values (A. Gorz), we observe an opposite trend: movement towards even greater individualism, but now in the sphere of creativity and self-realization (production of “intangible” goods), in which pleasure and prestige are associated with attracting attention, with personal exclusivity and media influence. This suggests that, perhaps, the means proposed by some modern theorists (full automation of production, payment of unconditional income to everyone, etc.) may not be enough to implement the egalitarian version of post-capitalism.

Keywords
post-capitalism, capitalism, post-materialism, social values, socialism, communism, personality revolution, creative self-realization, social media, social revolution
Acknowledgment
This article is a translation of: Давыдов Д.А. Ценностные основания посткапитализма: от «модуса обладания» к индвидуализму самореализующихся личностей? // Sotsiologicheskie Issledovaniia. 2021. No 12: 78–90. DOI: 10.31857/S013216250016429-4
Received
23.12.2021
Date of publication
24.12.2021
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6
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58
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1 Introduction. From the very beginning of the idea of communism for the vast majority of left-wing social theorists the prospect of post-capitalism has been associated with what we could describe as the liberation of the individual. By this we should understand not the literal "liberation" of a particular, but an achievement of a social state when a person's social being ceases to be determined by mundane, material factors, this means the world of commodity fetishes falls, and social relations characterized by sincerity and reciprocity will replace alienation and commodification. E. Fromm conceptually perceived this intuition common to the left theory, problematizing what he designated as the "mode of having" [Fromm, 2016]. To be in the "having" mode means to give preference to consumption, money, physical enjoyment, wealth. On the contrary, "to Be" means to enjoy creativity, to "transcend" in a social sense, to assert oneself through activity and the manifestation of one's abilities, talent, thereby embodying the wealth of human talents. Accordingly, when people talk about post-capitalism today, they usually mean an orientation towards "being". Thus, left-wing supporters of the idea of unconditional income see guaranteed benefits for everyone as something "liberating" from the need for everyday goods, and therefore giving more opportunities for creative self-realization ("gives people a chance to create positions for themselves in a non-market economy" [Mason, 2016: 387], provides an opportunity "to spend more time doing things that are truly important to us" [Bregman, 2018: 192]). "In the lives of many people, – write F. Van Parais and I. Vanderborght - there comes a stage when they can make the greatest contribution to the well-being of their loved ones and humanity as a whole through various forms of unpaid activities, starting with volunteer initiatives in the field of children's health and ending with Wikipedia" [Vanderborght, 2020: 51]. When it comes to the automation of production, the prospect of an abundance of material goods and a hypothetical post-work state, it is emphasized that the post-capitalist project "will lead to the transformation of the subject: conditions will arise for the mass transformation of selfish individuals created by capitalism into social and creative forms of social expression liberated by the end of “work" [Srnicek, Williams, 2019: 255]. In short, there are implicit/explicit references to the "mode of being": the post-capitalist future is associated with the values of creative activity, with free collective/joint activity, with asserting oneself in the world by creating public goods, etc. The free expression of "self" is put in the first place in the hierarchy of priorities. The main thing is to remove material obstacles on the way to self-realization. The idea of minimizing "forced" labor and providing everyone with a guaranteed set of material goods with a general attitude towards achieving freedom of expression is shared by many authors. However, there is something vulnerable in this trend, which indicates a naive belief in the "mode of being" itself. Some necessary element in the logic itself is missing. First of all, it is an attempt, relatively speaking, to rigidly bind individualism and alienation to the capitalist economy. All the bad is associated with "materialistic values" (that is, the focus on maximizing material well-being to the detriment of the immaterial, spiritual, etc.), and all the good is exclusively associated with words such as "personality", "freedom", "creativity", etc. However, the word "personality" itself, which in semantic content is closest to the concept of "mode of being", is quite ambiguous and is associated with very heterogeneous ways of social activity. If by "personality1" we mean a stable system of socially significant traits, which characterize an individual as a member of a particular society or community, then we can distinguish two opposite "modes of being", more precisely, "modes of self–realization". Firstly, it is a communitarian mode of self-realization (to which, apparently, Fromm appealed), conditioned by the social values of friendship, co-creativity, striving for the common good, etc. In this case, a person is someone for whom the wealth of his own "I" is closely connected with "deep immersion" in social life and with a sense of reciprocity and being a socialized individual. Secondly, it is an individualistic mode of self-realization, when an individual's social activity consists in stating himself in the world by searching for differences from others, by displacing others ("I" is when others are pushed into the background, when a personal social image is noticeable, attracts attention, differs in some way, stands out from the rest, etc.). Which of these two modes will prevail in a hypothetical post-capitalist situation of freedom from "external necessity"? Many concepts of post-capitalism are utopian in the sense that they focus too much on the "good" aspects of the "mode of being" ignoring the prospect of universal competition for self-realization2. This can be explained: it is much easier to build a left utopia, fighting for freedom "from" something (from material need, for example), than to try to understand what this freedom can lead to. Next, I will try to show that many social phenomena in modern society indicate a movement towards the predominance of the individualistic mode of self-realization, and therefore from the post-capitalist future one should expect general alienation of an individual from society rather than "the mass transformation of selfish individuals created by capitalism into social and creative forms of social expression."
1. This word has many meanings: in the first, it is a person as an individual, as a subject of relations and conscious activity; in the second, a relatively stable system of socially significant and unique individual traits that characterize an individual; in the third, it is an individual with outstanding qualities that influences the masses and the course of history; in the fourth, it is an individual who is in the center of public attention due to his social position and the performance of a social or professional role. I think it is also reasonable to understand personality as a social construct existing in the social imaginary. In this sense, the individual is forced to constantly "invest" in maintaining a favorable image for him in the representation of others.

2. The word "self-realization" is as ambiguous as the word "personality". Here it will be used in a narrow sense as a struggle for public recognition, popularity, a placing "I" among others, etc.
2 Expansion of the "mode of self-realization". The history of personality (as a social phenomenon) is the history of the struggle of human individuality with faceless depersonalizing forces of the collective and nature. The modern expansion of the mode of self-realization is stipulated with several factors. First of all, it is an improvement in the quality of life: human life has ceased to be too fleeting and unpredictable. The squalor of being, when death could be waiting everywhere at any time (from war, looting, but mostly from countless diseases: plague, cholera, typhus or the common cold), was replaced by predictability and relative well-being. In turn, the progress of science and technology, the successes of the struggle for rights and social guarantees provided greater freedom, so that people gradually ceased to be immersed in continuous exhausting work. There was more and more time in people's lives for their "I". Where previously there were faceless masses, individual representatives of which quickly "wore out" and died, now independent subjects appeared, possessing basic rights, confident in the future and striving for something more than "eating their bread by the sweat of their brow".
3 In principle, the processes of individualization (see, for example: [Bauman, 2008]) and privatization, the destruction of the “Gemeinschaft” and the formation of the “Gesellschaft” (see: [Tönnies, 2002]) accompanied the transition to Modernity. For example, R. Sennett describes the processes of the "fall of the public man" in the XIX century as a mixture of public and private ("the statement "public personality" (personality in public) turned out to be an oxymoron; ultimately, personality displaced the element of public from this phrase" [Sennett, 2002: 295]. The mode of self-realization gradually expanded. But the real turning point was the transition from the so-called mass (Fordist, industrial, etc.) society to a post-Fordist, informational, post-industrial society. These processes have contributed to a number of "critical" changes.
4 Firstly, thanks to the development of automation and customization technologies, a turn from a mass consumption model to an individualized model has taken place. Gray sameness gradually became a thing of the past, and the utilitarian function of objects was replaced by an image. Consumption increasingly turned out to be a means of self-expression. A. Toffler wrote in 1970: "We have reached a dialectical turning point in the technological development of society. And technology will not limit our individuality, but will serve to increase our choice and our freedom - incrementally" [Toffler, 2008: 307].
5 Secondly, the automation of production and the growth of the service sector somewhat modified the labor market, which involved more and more women which came out of the depersonalized world of home life into different areas where they could express themselves. The service sector, in turn, multiplied areas that required not muscular strength, but personal qualities: creativity, benevolence, the ability to work in a team, show leadership qualities, etc.
6 Thirdly, the role of creative activity in the economy has increased many times. Therefore, already in the "Post-Industrial Society", D. Bell almost directly associates post-industrial tendencies with post-capitalism (although it should be borne in mind that we are talking about a reference to R. Dahrendorf, whose term "post-capitalism" means a state of "institutionalized" conflict between the bourgeoisie and the proletariat [Dahrendorf, 1959]). He writes that "the distinguishing feature of the new stratification system will be the separation between scientific and technical classes, on the one hand, and those who will remain outside this category, on the other" [Bell, 2004: 151]. In the context of our article, it is important to note: as the importance of creative work grew, so did the importance of individuality, personality, as scientists or creative engineers turned out to be irreplaceable: the owners of a name as a "receptacle" of merits and mysterious unique talents. Therefore, A. Toffler notes, "as knowledge increasingly becomes the essence of work, workplaces become more individualized, i.e. less interchangeable" [Toffler, 2009: 259].
7 The once-noted "personal" specificity of the scientific and technical class will subsequently be emphasized repeatedly. D. Brooks, author of the bestseller "Bobo in Paradise" (2000), examines a remarkable synthesis that occurred as the role of creative people in the bourgeois economy increased: the Bohemians (Parisian Bohemians, beatniks, hippies, etc.), who always rejected the bourgeois- lifestyle, gradually "bourgeoisized", while capitalism became partly "bohemian". That's why Brooks writes about "bobo" - bourgeois bohemian. Bourgeois bohemia has changed social perceptions of prestige. Now it is not economic status or money that are the key factors of prestige, but a non-trivial personality: a non-standard life story, creative competencies, education and easy "crazy" characteristic of geniuses. Brooks notices an important thing: "the organization's man has been turned upside down. White [William White– D.D.] described a social order in which the interests of the group prevailed. Today, the "I" comes to the fore" [Brooks, 2013: 147]. Two years later, in the famous book "The Creative Class: People Who are Changing the Future", R. Florida will give a similar characterization to people whose main economic role is the "production" of ideas: "If previously people were united by the framework of public institutions, forming a group identity, an essential feature of modern life has become the creation of an individual identity. Such self-invention and reinvention often in a manner reflecting the nature of our creativity is the most important sign of the creative ethos" [Florida, 2016: 21].
8 In other words, the post-industrial (post-Fordist) wave brought to life a special social stratum/stratum of "high individualized persons3". The process of, relatively speaking, "mass production of personality" has been launched. Now it is necessary to shift the analytical focus: we do not know how the existing contradictions of the capitalist system will be resolved. Perhaps sooner or later the struggle of the social grassroots for something like unconditional income will contribute to the egalitarian redistribution of rental flows, which will serve as a partial solution to the problem of the shortage of material goods. But in any case, there will remain something that goes beyond capitalism. We did not notice how the production of material goods was gradually replaced by the production of the personality (or personalities)4 itself, which was almost invisible from the point of view of the market. Bourgeois bohemia often finds itself at a loss within the framework of the "old bourgeois coordinate system", since the results of intellectual activity usually go to the holders of intellectual rents. But many of its representatives found themselves at the top of a completely new social pyramid, where status is determined not so much by wealth as by non-trivial creative abilities and fame. Now not only material wealth is a source of pleasure, envy and competition, but the personality itself.
3. Of course, everyone is an individual in the broad sense of the word. Here we mean the "possession" of a personality precisely as "visibility-for-others", "visibility", "fame", as the ability to say "about yourself" something original that distinguishes "yourself" from the rest - "others".

4. The author proceeds from the premise that personality is a good. It is worth explaining once again what is meant by "personality" here. You can recall the difference between persona and personalitas. One etymological source points to a specific person, the other - to her appearance, to what is in the representation of others. Therefore, a personality is also what a particular person is, his appearance, physiological data, etc., but it is at the same time constructed "personal" images circulating in the public consciousness. In this form, a person may well be a boon (not a commodity!). The "I" in all its hypostases satisfies a huge number of needs: from the need for self-respect to self-realization. I can simply enjoy the image or the fact that I am respected or correctly perceived, etc. Of course, a person can be "dysfunctional", but any good can be used to harm under certain circumstances (just as a bad mattress leads to scoliosis or smoking poisons the lungs).
9 It is important to note that this process does not occur only at the elite level. Rather, it is worth talking about the formation of something like a "society of universal self-realization" (a society in which self-realization becomes the highest, almost officially declared value). A personality with a capital letter "L" has become an object of desire, and an irreconcilable and constant struggle is being waged for its "acquisition". The mode of self-realization is expanding and becoming ubiquitous.
10 The society of "universal self-realization"? It was 1977, when the book "The Silent Revolution" by the American sociologist and political scientist R. Inglehart was published [Inglehart, 1977]. It summarized the results of public opinion polls, which showed that young and well-off people in Western democratic societies are less concerned about purely material problems of wealth and security, and more interested in problems of civil liberties and ecology. Subsequently, the hypothesis of R. Inglehart was repeatedly confirmed [Inglehart, 1997]: as the "basic" material needs are met, people more often pay attention to the problems of personal self-realization, freedom, as well as to all those issues which go beyond the "search for daily bread" (issues of gender equality, problems of the rights of representatives of sexual minorities, etc.).
11 This growth of attention to "personal" subjects was observed almost everywhere - even in matters of faith. As shown by Ch. Taylor, after the Second World War, the "Age of Authenticity" has come: "simplified expressivism" permeates everywhere: "the number of trainings that promise you to find yourself, realize yourself, release your true self, etc. is multiplying" [Taylor, 2017: 586]. It is noteworthy: religion does not go into oblivion at all, rather it becomes extremely individualized, becomes a matter of an individual: "an increasing number of people accept what was previously considered unacceptable, for example, consider themselves Catholics, not accepting many key dogmas, or combine Christianity and Buddhism, or pray, not being sure that they believe [and] many are involved in composing their own personal worldview through a kind of "bricolage", but some models that run counter to traditional constellations are also widespread " [Taylor, 2017: 635-636].
12 Soon, social psychologists faced the "Age of Authenticity" and the realities of the society of "universal self-realization". When J. Twenge, a well-known social psychologist who studies value changes among different generations, and her colleagues began to study the millennial generation (born from about 1981 to 1996), they found a striking shift in how young people are aware of themselves and their personality. In many ways, there are worth discoveries of the Twenge collective, which put forth stereotypes about millennials as a generation of narcissists (Twenge called one of her books "Generation Me" [Twenge, 2014] (consonant with both the word "me/myself" (me) and the word "millennial" (millennial). Nevertheless, Twenge did not seek to label, but turned to the results of large-scale cross-temporal studies. These studies (surveys of students from 1966 to 2010) showed that representatives of generation "Y" (millennials) were more likely to rate themselves "above average" in such aspects as academic ability, striving to achieve goals, leadership. They were also much more likely to rate their career potential as high. This increase in self-esteem was not associated with real success, since the results of standardized tests were unchanged [Twenge, Campbell, Gentile, 2012]. There was also a value shift from "internal" (intrinsic – a sense of community, a sense of moral duty, etc.) to "external" (extrinsic – money, power, fame) priorities [Twenge, Campbell, Freeman, 2012]. It is important to note right away: the expansion of the mode of self-realization in its "individualistic" version does not lead to universal solidarity at all, but to an increasing alienation. Twenge called millennials narcissists insofar as this generation was brought up in a "personal" ideological way. Children were brought up trying to see them as an independent persons which had the right to vote from the cradle. In the sense of hypertrophied humanism, these children from a very young age sought to "find themselves", "believe in themselves", "do as their heart tells them", etc. As a result, when the Twenge research group encountered grown-up millennials, they everywhere observed similar self-characterization: "I like to show my body"; "I like to look at my body"; "I like to look at myself in the mirror"; "I will become a great person"; "I can live my life the way I want"; "I like to be praised", etc. Accordingly, there was a decrease in empathy indicators. As it turned out, millennials tended to express less concern about the problems of others, and they were characterized by less civic engagement. They were also much less likely to respond that they trusted others, sought to sacrifice something for others or engage in charitable activities [Twenge, Campbell, Freeman, 2012].
13 Generational changes in key values, self-esteem, priorities, etc. reflected in culture. J. Twenge, in collaboration with W. K. Campbell and B. Gentile, conducted a study of the occurrence of "individualistic" and "collectivist" words in Google Books for 1960-2008. They found that "individualistic" ("independent", "individual", "individuality", "unique", "uniqueness", "self", "independence", etc.) words began to occur in books much more often (an increase from 0.000093% in 1960 to 0.00016% in 2008), which cannot be said about "collectivist" words ("commune", "community", "community", "unity", "community", "association", etc.), which demonstrated the opposite trend. Moreover, the individualistic words and phrases themselves became focused on a unique personality, that is, many of the individualistic phrases, especially those that occurred more often over time, included the word "I” or emphasized uniqueness and/or superiority [Twenge et al., 2013].
14 Not only Twenge and her colleagues came to these conclusions. For example, Y. T. Uhls and P. M. Greenfield analyzed American TV shows for teenagers in the USA (the sample consisted of the two most popular programs per year from 1967 to 2007). The study was based on a rather complex content analysis scheme: it measured how much the main character craved fame or aspired to the realization of some other values. To do this, people (N= 60) who are familiar or getting acquainted with certain TV shows as they study, were asked to note the presence of certain aspirations of the main characters. It turned out that fame, as an extremely individualistic value, was rated as the most significant in the 2007 editions of the show compared to the fifteenth (out of sixteen) place in most of the previous decades. Similarly, other "individualistic" stories like financial success5 became more frequent. This is not surprising6, since today, the authors note, in fact, the theme of success and fame has become comprehensive7 [Uhls, Greenfield, 2011].
5. "Achievements" have risen from tenth to second place in recent decades, "physical fitness" has moved from sixteenth to ninth place. On the contrary, communitarian values have lost in relative importance over time. Three communitarian values - a sense of community, tradition and goodwill - showed a sharp decline from 1967 to 2007, and the "sense of community" moved in 2007 to 11th place.

6. See also: the theory of social change and human development by P.M. Greenfield [Greenfield, 2019], according to which, as the learning environment moves towards high technologies, the environment of everyday life becomes more urbanized, the level of education increases, people become richer, and psychological development moves towards strengthening individualism, while traditional, family and community values are eroded.

7. A typical example they cite is the Disney TV series Hannah Montana (2006): the main character of this series, named Miley Stewart (Miley Cyrus), is a simple teenage schoolgirl by day, and at night turns out to be a famous pop singer Hannah Montana, hiding her real identity from the public.
15 Social media, social celebrity and the pursuit of fame and attention. Today there is another large-scale shift towards the expansion of the sphere of "production" of personality. So, social media creates a fairly large (and increasing) stratum of people with "network" fame. Diverse micro-celebrities are now side by side with "traditional" celebrities [see: Senft, 2008; Abidin, 2018], people who are famous mainly in social media (respectively, the number of subscribers of micro-celebrities should be at least 100,000). The language is rapidly enriching to describe this expanding area of influence: they are no longer just talking about celebrities or micro-celebrities, words like "nano-celebrity" or "nano-influencer8" (people with the number of subscribers in social media from 1000 to 100,000) appear. Hierarchical pyramids are being formed, where mega-influencers are located at the top, macro-influencers are slightly lower, and micro- and nanoinfluencers are at the bottom (in some ways this resembles the famous pyramids of feudal hierarchies, only now the elites "own" not the land, but the attention of people (as a kind of "repostman")). Social media also greatly increases the number of creative niches where fans of bright personalities act as bloggers flock. Genres and subgenres are multiplying: reviews, streams (online broadcasts, including gaming), life blogs, etc. Thematic niches know no limit: from serious political blogs to videos in the genre of ASMR9 or mukbang10. The viewer is at the seemingly strangest content that would never have appeared in traditional media.
8. См.: >>>> (дата обращения: 11.08.2021).

9. Autonomous sensory meridional response.

10. Mokpan (cor. 먹방, literally "broadcast of a meal", there are transcription variants "mokban" and "mukbang").
16 It is noteworthy that social media generates the phenomenon of universal opinion leaders. A lot of people acquire tools to influence the opinions and beliefs of their subscribers-fans, while turning out to be "masters of themselves", controlling their discourse, which was unimaginable earlier when the formats of interactions with the public were limited to the institutional framework of the show business world (numerous agents as intermediaries, journalists, media bosses, rating organizations, the "narrow" format of TV shows, films, etc.). Today any micro-celebrity has the opportunity to interact directly with its audience 24 hours a day. Micro-celebrities become "universal personalities as people with authoritative opinions on almost any issues. Hence the increasingly frequent cases of politicization of social media influencers, including in Russia. It should not be surprising that stars and bloggers are increasingly appearing in the political sphere in one role or another one (speaking in favor of election candidates, commenting on political news, or even successful/unsuccessful attempts to occupy senior government positions) [Davydov, 2020].
17 The evidence of success ceases to be the possession of money. Now, in many cases, the key "influence indicator" is the social media subscriber counter, and not (only?) bank account. Being popular on social media means having fame and influence must bring wealth as if it were natural process. The pursuit of "self-realization through popularity" begins, a competition in which subscribers, likes and comments become the "currency of attention". Today young people are representatives of generation "Z" ("Zoomers" - born in 2000-2017). Do they wear any changes compared to generation "Y"? Individualism has only deepened, since generation "Z" is the generation of social media (for example, 95% of Zoomers regularly watch YouTube, and 50% cannot imagine life without it11), in which bright personalities set in the center of universe. Y.T. Uhls, E. Zgourou and P. M. Greenfield in 2014 surveyed 315 children aged 9-15 years in the United States about their preferences in relation to the media, as well as their aspirations for the future. The participants' responses about future goals were grouped around two factors representing individualistic, egoistic and collectivistic, other-oriented aspirations. Fame, image, money and status were important components of the former; helping the needy, helping the family and living close to the family were important as not so important elements. As a result, it turned out that children who often watch TV and spend a lot of time in social networks demonstrate more pronounced individualistic aspirations, and the influence of social media was stronger than the influence of TV [Uhls, Zgourou, Greenfield, 2014]. According to a study by Morning Consult (2019, n=3000, including 1000 representatives of generation "Z"), 23% of American adults from generation "Z" strive for fame, while among millennials there are 15%, and among representatives of generation "X" - 8%12. A survey (2019) of people aged 18-34 (N=1000) conducted by PSFK and Suzy showed that almost half (46%) of "zoomers" say that "self-expression" is "very important" for them, compared with 37% of millennials13. A similar picture was demonstrated by the Morning Consult survey (2019, N=2000): 12% of young Americans consider themselves as network influencers, and 54% would become a media personality if they had the opportunity. 58% of Generation "Z" representatives noted that being famous on social media means changing the world for the better; for 51% it is an opportunity to share ideas with a large audience; also, for 50% it is an opportunity to earn money, and 17% noted that they are motivated by achieving fame14. According to a 2017 study conducted by The Sun (n=1000), three quarters of English children say they would prefer a career in social media. One in nine said it was about fame, and the same proportion craved the opportunity to express themselves. Among the most desirable fields of activity are YouTuber (34.2%), blogger/vlogger (18.1%), musician/singer (16%), actor (15.7%), director (13.65%), doctor (13.45%)15. These results were confirmed in 2019, when The Harris Poll did research among 3000 children in USA, Great Britain and China, dedicated to the 50th anniversary of the landing of American astronauts on the Moon, showed that in Western countries children today are more interested in YouTube than space flights. When asked who they would like to become when they grow up, about 3 out of 10 American and British children answered that they want to be YouTubers or bloggers. They are less willing to see themselves as teachers, professional athletes, and musicians. 11% would like to be astronauts. Things are somewhat different in China: the most favorite profession are an astronaut (56%), 18% would like to be a YouTuber or blogger16 (although it is worth noting that this figure is not small17).
11. >>>> (date of access: 11.08.2021).

12. >>>> (дата обращения: 11.08.2021).

13. См.: >>>> (date of access: 11.08.2021)

14. >>>> (date of access: 11.08.2021).

15. >>>> (date of access: 11.08.2021).

16. >>>> (date of access: 11.08.2021).

17. Cultural specifics must be taken into account, but it should also be borne in mind that China is still far behind Western countries in terms of living standards per person, so many social processes there may "lag behind". Nevertheless, some studies show that many characteristics of certain generations in the West are very similar to the characteristics of these generations, for example, in Russia [see: Radaev, 2019].
18 Today A. Warhol's famous phrase "in the future, everyone will be world-famous for 15 minutes " seems not so utopian. Fame, indeed, can come easily and suddenly, although often not for long. For example, the algorithms of the TikTok short video service allow almost everyone to be the center of attention of many people. Moreover, there is something like an "inflation" of fame, accompanied by the "socialization" of celebrity and the the "celebritization" of social relations. As a result, literally every user of social networks adopts many patterns of behavior that were previously peculiar exclusively to stars. For example, the algorithms of the Facebook social network are configured so that users are constantly encouraged to seek likes, reposts and, in general, popularity. So that users can move up the news feed, they should receive more likes, comments, and make more publications than competing users. Accordingly, the culture of celebrity is expanding as much as possible: now even a person with a small number of friends / subscribers performs almost the same actions (aimed at profitable self-presentation, etc.) as celebrities [Cirucci, 2019]. In this sense, the study of J. Mavroudis, an employee of Swinburne University of Technology (Melbourne), who literally became a micro-celebrity on Instagram (having more than 27,000 subscribers), in order to examine the subject of research from the closest, "included" angle (the so-called method of critical autoethnography). He came to the conclusion that it is worth talking about a kind of "work for glory" (fame labor). This "work", firstly, is connected with the constant pressure that subscribers exert on micro-celebrity (the need to constantly stay "on trend", regularly publish photos, please the tastes of the public, etc.). And secondly, it is a constant production of personality. When Mavroudis asked 504 of his subscribers if they were striving for fame, 83% said that they actively participate in the same strategies of "self-branding" and visibility as micro-celebrity [Mavroudis, 2019: 90].
19 Thus, the "production" of personality becomes almost ubiquitous. We live in a world where fame, authority, prestige and enjoyment of life are in many cases determined by being in the spotlight. This is a world in which bright and popular creative18 personalities will determine the images of the future.
18. If we understand creativity as the creation of new cultural or material values, then it is not necessarily a predictor of popularity. However, creativity can also be the process itself, within which a personality is created (produced) (the practice of creating images, promoting them, PR, etc.). In this sense, the activity of, say, models on Instagram is also a kind of creativity aimed at creating unique images and practices of their public "presentation".
20 Conclusion. Nothing lasts forever in this world, and it would be extremely reckless to consider capitalism as permanent. For many years, left-wing ideologists, theorists and practitioners of all branches have been waiting for the onset of the post-capitalist era, in which the well-known evils of the "the economic formation of society" will be overcome. In the end, these expectations are justified: today we can say that the world is literally going out of all the negativity associated with the capitalist system. However, the history of left-wing political thought is the history of the search for revolutionary subjects in which sooner or later leftists were disappointed (from the "grassroots" struggle of workers and peasants to youth, the "creative class", the precariat, etc.). And today, when it would seem that the contradictions of the capitalist world-system are only growing, it is hardly possible to talk about any real prospect of something like a socialist world revolution.
21

But what if all the time we were talking about post-capitalism, we were looking completely in the wrong direction? It is quite possible that post-capitalism is not a bright communist future. This article presents an attempt to shift the research focus, assuming that getting rid of the need for basic material goods and "liberation from work" is not a condition for overcoming alienation and competition. Yes, the trends described above can be interpreted as the advent of another version of capitalism (and put it on a par with cognitive capitalism, aesthetic capitalism, technocapitalism, supercapitalism, glam capitalism, etc.). However, it is hard to believe that if the need for a market economy and all the basic attributes of capitalism suddenly disappears, then the competition for self-affirmation noted above will disappear, media personalities will give up fame and the "intangible" benefits bestowed by fame, as well as what allows them to "change the world for the better" (apparently, better than others19). What if the post-capitalist "immaterial" (A. Gorz) is not limited to abundant knowledge and ideas, but also includes personalities in the social imaginary as goods (see footnote above), the “consumption” of which by one person do completely "excludes" access to consumption for other persons? Previously, the authors of left-wing utopias (for example, science fiction writers like A. and B. Strugatsky) drew worlds in which life is so rich and interesting (the conquest of space, the creation of grandiose technologies, architectural masterpieces, etc.) that few people want to chase popularity. Apparently, today humanity is moving in the opposite direction. It is worth talking about the advent of an era in which the struggle for popularity and recognition is becoming almost ubiquitous (only gadgets for consumers of information content are developing very quickly). A kind of society of "universal self-realization" is being formed, in which everyone is assigned their place in the new social hierarchy, where mega-popular "opinion leaders" are at the top. All this hardly speaks of a movement towards universal harmony of co-creation ("mode of being", according to Fromm). What we have (and see, judging by the value shifts), testifies to the growing competition for self-realization (which is increasingly understood precisely as the achievement of outstanding creative success, recognition, popularity, etc20.). And it is likely that this competition will only be more ruthless and merciless than the competition for material goods. In the end, personality itself is at stake now: and among the possible life scenarios there will be both euphoria from success and collapse, creative failure, gray nothingness, everyday life. That is why today they say that representatives of generation "Z" are more susceptible to stress and depression [Twenge, 2017]. This is quite understandable in an era when every personality has its own "success counter" (likes, reposts, subscribers, etc.), when the beauty flashing in the news feeds of social networks and life oozing colors contrasts with failures and collapse hidden from the public.

19. There are several arguments in favor of the assumption that the trends discussed above affect phenomena that go beyond capitalism: 1) personality as a good existing in the social imaginary can hardly be a commodity, that is, sold on the market; 2) the "production" of personality is something that is inextricably linked with creative activity as the creation of intangible benefits in the form of original ideas, concepts, engineering solutions, etc. (associated with a particular person), the value of which cannot be adequately measured using market instruments; 3) popularity, attention, fame, recognition, etc. satisfy the needs for recognition, self-respect, self-realization, etc., which speaks not only about the "instrumental" value of "possessing" the corresponding "personality-persona"; 4) the marked expansion of the sphere of production of personality occurs as the sphere of material labor gradually shrinks under the influence of automation and robotization processes of production; 5) attention (not platforms to attract it) as a key limited resource in the "struggle for self-realization", it is hardly possible to freely sell or buy on the market, unlike the resources of the bourgeois era (oil, coal, electricity, etc.).

20. This applies not only to the online activity and blogging discussed above (which have already "absorbed" almost all art: from music to artistic mastery), but also to such "serious" areas of creative activity as science, where there is a widespread pursuit of the number of publications and their citation (read – the same popularity).

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