Re: [Pen-l] Consumerism: an Historical Perspective

[Sandwichman <lumpoflabor@xxxxxxxxx>]

Henry Ford adopted the five-day week in his auto plants in 1926. In response, the National Association of Manufacturers magazine produced a special issue asking, "Will the Five Day Week Become Universal?" and answering, emphaticallly, "It Will Not!"

The relationship between the shorter work time movement and consumerism is profoundly dialectical, to say the least. The argument presented by Ira Steward and George Gunton and championed by Samuel Gompers was that shorter hours led to higher pay and thus more consumption by workers. Ford's explanation of the five-day week echoed Gunton: more leisure meant more consumption.

The New Deal ratified a Fordist interpretation of the Steward thesis and by 1937 even the National Association of Manufacturers was tacitly acknowledging, in a nation-wide billboard campaign, the connection between shorter hours, high wages and a high national standard of living.

Lawrence Glickman wrote in "A Living Wage" about the American working class's conversion from a producerist to a consumerist ideology in the 19th century and the role of the eight-hour movement in that transition. It is a mistake to view American consumerism as strictly an imposition on workers by capitalists and as totally lacking in merit. Big business deflected the more radical intentions of the eight-hour movement and appropriated the less challenging elements. The task today is not to dismiss consumerism as a defeat or sell-out but to rediscover and fulfill those more radical intentions that lie at its core.

On Thu, Apr 2, 2009 at 6:23 AM, c b <cb31450@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:

 

"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.)

^^^^^^^^
CB: As to the status of a social movement in favor of work-sharing or
reduction in work hours during the 20's maybe Sandwichman knows more.
There was some consciousness of reducing the workday because of May
Day and the historical events giving rise to it in the late 1800's.

Marxists would have been aware of reducing the length of the work day
as a goal because of the discussion of the issue of absolute surplus
value , and reducing the work day in _Capital_ and the emphasis that
the Bolsheviks put on May Day. How much this translated into "social
movement" in the US in the 1920's , I'm not sure.

-- 
Sandwichman
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