Consumption is a systematic and total idealist practice, which far exceeds our relations to objects and relations among individuals, one that extens to all manifestations (registres) of history, communication and culture.
Consumption is an active, collective behavior: It is something enforced, a morality, an institution. It is a whole system of values, with all that expression implies in terms of group integration and social control functions.
Consumption is a metric whereby people have been getting more and more equal. That is the fraction of families that have a dishwasher, a sewing machine, and a television set is increasingly small.
Consumption is also immediately production, just as in nature the consumption of the elements and chemical substances is the production of the plant.
Consumption is a moment of production in that, the individual who produces an object, by then consuming it, returns to himself, and returns as a productive and self reproducing individual.
Consumption is a power strategy. It is not the things themselves that are consumed, but the status value that is ascribed to them when they are made into symbols.