THE IDEOLOGY OF THE CONSUMER SOCIETY AS AN ELEMENT OF THE «SOFT POWER» STRATEGY

The relevance of the article is due, on the one hand, to the popularity of the concept of "soft power", and, on the other, to the large-scale transformation of a traditional society into a so-called "consumer society". The purpose of the study is to analyze the mechanism of non-violent management (so-called" soft power") of society based on the exploitation of the practices of"consumer society". The Genesis and functioning of the consumer society is one of the main modern global problems that attracts the attention of researchers from various fields of scientific knowledge. Modern consumer society is based on the following pillars: economic (mass consumption), social (urbanization) and ideological (the introduction of the "seem, not be" attitude into the mass consciousness). There is every reason to assert that the problem of the relationship of consumer society with its attributive features and the mechanisms of "soft power" in domestic and foreign science is not given due attention. This article aims to provide a brief analysis of these two phenomena in the above-mentioned context. According to A. Gramsci, holding power involves not only coercion, but also persuasion. Any state, regardless of which class is currently dominant, is based on two fundamental pillars – force and consent ("soft violence"). In terms of content, the desire to consume is the main motive of modern life. Therefore, the management of these motives is the core element of power strategies in modern society. This article is the first attempt to characterize the prospects for the evolution of the Russian segment of "consumer society" through the prism of the degradation of work ethics in Russia.