Published: 15 May 2015
Purpose. The consumer society is quite multifaceted phenomenon, complete understanding of which requires dealing with many areas of public life, where consumer trends penetrate: education, ecology, politics, axiosphere, art, lifestyle and life, etc. In the given article, the author considers a narrow aspect of consumer culture attitude to work. Methods. The author carries out a comparative analysis of characteristics of the Soviet anti-consuming culture and the modern consuming one. Results and scientific novelty. The author proves the fact of deep inversion, whereby work is vested high status in the consumer society not based on its social usefulness and professionalism, but because of its profitability. The author underlines two fundamental paradoxes of consuming culture: 1) aspiration to enhance freedom and socio-economic status through leisure leads to unauthenticity of leisure and practice according to the rules of consumerism, 2) to achieve a high level of consumption it is necessary to implement labor desire to maximize profits through labor, and labor time decreases with increase of spare time, which is one of the indicators of status of an individual according to consumerism.