Sharon Beder: > The Pacific Ecologist, whence this article came, provided this editorial > note: Sharon Beder explores the history of consumer societies from the > 1920s when over-production of goods exceeded demand. Instead of > stabilising the economy, reducing working hours, and sharing work > around, which would have brought more leisure time for all, > industrialists decided to expand markets by promoting consumerism to the > working classes.
"Industrialists decided"? Instead, the industrialists likely _never even considered_ the alternative to promoting consumerism (i.e., reducing work hours and sharing work). The key reason why "industrialists" didn't think of work-sharing and the like was that any social movement in favor of it was extremely weak during the 1920s (largely as a result of the industrialists' shared hatred of unions, "high" wages, etc.) Third, the industrialists likely didn't get together to make this kind of decision. For example, the creation of mass consumer credit during the 1920s was a product of decentralized decision-making by banks, based on their profit motive, and not on some vision that production exceeded the demand for goods. The role of central decision-making probably came in only when the bankers lobbied to make sure that the the extension of consumer credit was legal. > The social decision to produce unlimited quantities of > goods rather than leisure, nurtured wastefulness, obsolescence, and > inefficiency and created the foundation for our modern consumer culture. > People were trained to be both workers and consumers in a culture of > work and spend. The rest of this follows from the fallacious view that "industrialists decided." We should face the fact that a lot of what happens under capitalism is not due to some concerted decision by "industrialists" and other greed-heads. It _just happens_, as a result of the "laws of motion" of the system and the unpredictable results of class struggle. -- Jim Devine / "Segui il tuo corso, e lascia dir le genti." (Go your own way and let people talk.) -- Karl, paraphrasing Dante. _______________________________________________ pen-l mailing list [email protected] https://lists.csuchico.edu/mailman/listinfo/pen-l
