ABSTRACT
In the course of the worldwide invasion of its cultural and informational infrastructures, contemporary capitalism has fabricated a synthetic culture that has become the matrix of perceptions and orientations of masses of people both in the industrial world and in the newly independent states within the capitalist orbit. Perhaps the most important feature of this synthetic culture is its consumerist ideology. The standardization of popular culture provides the dominant classes with happy, exploited people whose minds are sedated with entertainment featuring comic strips, mindless music, and soap operas and comedies revolving around situations that distort reality and ignore basic problems of society. The communications industry is the main agent in the manufacture of a synthetic culture which promotes the concept of a universal and permanent economic system that is not to be challenged in any fundamental way. The standardization of consumption and culture begins with the adoption of new products and styles for the consumer markets in the imperial economies.
