The Gospel of Consumption: Of Subservience to Machines, Human Welfare, and Kellog's Six-Hour Day

[Subdivisions]

An excellent article on where we are today as Americans:

...snip...

Rather than realizing the enriched social life that Kellogg’s (Ed.: Yes, that Kellog's) vision offered us, we have impoverished our human communities with a form of materialism that leaves us in relative isolation from family, friends, and neighbors. We simply don’t have time for them. Unlike our great-grandparents who passed the time, we spend it. An outside observer might conclude that we are in the grip of some strange curse, like a modern-day King Midas whose touch turns everything into a product built around a microchip.

Of course not everybody has been able to take part in the buying spree on equal terms. Millions of Americans work long hours at poverty wages while many others can find no work at all. However, as advertisers well know, poverty does not render one immune to the gospel of consumption.

Meanwhile, the influence of the gospel has spread far beyond the land of its origin. Most of the clothes, video players, furniture, toys, and other goods Americans buy today are made in distant countries, often by underpaid people working in sweatshop conditions. The raw material for many of those products comes from clearcutting or strip mining or other disastrous means of extraction. Here at home, business activity is centered on designing those products, financing their manufacture, marketing them—and counting the profits.

KELLOGG’S VISION, DESPITE ITS POPULARITY with his employees, had little support among his fellow business leaders. But Dahlberg’s book had a major influence on Senator (and future Supreme Court justice) Hugo Black who, in 1933, introduced legislation requiring a thirty-hour workweek. Although Roosevelt at first appeared to support Black’s bill, he soon sided with the majority of businessmen who opposed it. Instead, Roosevelt went on to launch a series of policy initiatives that led to the forty-hour standard that we more or less observe today.

...snip...

http://www.orionmagazine.org/index.php/articles/article/2962

This is one of the better articles I've read lately. And, I read A LOT OF ARTICLES. I hope you'll read it too and comment.

Is there a way to break out of this madness that has been created for us? I remember when I was young, in the late 60s. Life seemed so grand then. The air was sweeter; the sky bluer. And, the entire family including aunts, uncles, cousins, grand-parents, fathers, mothers, brothers, sisters and family friends WERE ALL THERE every birthday, milestone, and holiday. Then, we all eventually went off to follow the almighty dollar and everyone got away from each other. And, here it is, 40 years later and I haven't seen some members of my family in decades. Literally. We just bacame too far-flung in order to pursue an income. And, in the process, we lost what we all once had. Family and community. And now, we all go off to work, by ourselves, alone. And all we can really be thankful for relevant to this exodus from family and community is the memories some of us are fortunate enough to have of a time when love, family and community, rather than greed and money and self-indulgence, ruled.

[Karmadillo]

1. Well, this is just a great article. Thank you very much for posting it.

nt

[Karmadillo]

6. Dupe

nt

[Subdivisions]

8. You are very welcome. n/t

[grasswire]

2. did you read the comments?

So interesting.

Thanks so much for this article. I'm passing it on to a liberal minister I know who is studying the birth of consumerism.

Have you read the book called "Land of Desire" by Leach? It's a big fat book detailing the deliberate grooming of consumers by retailers through all manner of manipulations. Sickening, yet fascinating.

[Hannah Bell]

3. you might be interested in this:

http://www.worklessparty.org/


Today the average worker is approximately 400% more efficient than a worker in the 1950s. In just eleven hours a worker can produce the same amount of goods and services as someone working 40 hours in the 1950s. It also means that 400% more stuff as to be consumed or people will loose their jobs.

The present economic problem is two fold.

Firstly, once adjusted for inflation, wages in North America have barely kept up with inflation. In a global context the situation is much more serious. When jobs are exported to third world countries with minimum labour standards, it creates a labour force that can’t afford to buy all the goods and services being produced. This is a virtual identical repeat of the problem that caused the great depression.

Secondly, what we have been consuming is the planet itself. According the UN millennium report 60% of the worlds ecosystems are in substantial decline. According to a study done by Dalhousie University the worlds stock of large fish has decreased by 90%. Even the USA intelligence agency is warning that we will be facing series water shortages by 2025. What got us out of previous depressions and recessions is that people started to consumed more. If current surplus production capacity is balanced with increased consumption our ecological footprint will increase faster than it has ever done before.(3) World leaders are frantically trying to find new ways for consumers to return to their dutiful roles of spending more and more. If they succeed we are going to have a much bigger problem to deal with.

So what is the solution?

One potential solution that was implemented in 1933 by President Roosevelt during the great depression is to reduce the workweek from ten hours a day to eight hours a day. Instead of having a high unemployment rate, the work is shared so that more people can become employed.

Technological efficiency gives us a choice; we can either continue to work just as hard and exponentially consume and grow the economy, or we can translate those gains in efficiency into other more meaningful activities such as child rearing, education, arts and holding elected leaders accountable. It is not surprising to learn that countries that do have lower workweeks such as Norway, Holland and Germany are more egalitarian and have lower crime rates. This might be coincidental, but I suspect that when people have time to invest in other types of work besides trying to endlessly fill up landfills with junk, we create the opportunity for a healthier and wiser society.

In 1933 we changed from a 10 hour day to a 8 hour day. Maybe its now time to change to a 6 hour day

[Subdivisions]

7. Thanks fior the link, Hannah. I will check it out. n/t

[leftstreet]

4. Aarrggh! NAM

In response, the industrial elite represented by NAM, including General Motors, the big steel companies, General Foods, DuPont, and others, decided to create their own propaganda. An internal NAM memo called for “re-selling all of the individual Joe Doakes on the advantages and benefits he enjoys under a competitive economy.” NAM launched a massive public relations campaign it called the “American Way.” As the minutes of a NAM meeting described it, the purpose of the campaign was to link “free enterprise in the public consciousness with free speech, free press and free religion as integral parts of democracy.”

Consumption was not only the linchpin of the campaign; it was also recast in political terms. A campaign booklet put out by the J. Walter Thompson advertising agency told readers that under “private capitalism, the Consumer, the Citizen is boss,” and “he doesn’t have to wait for election day to vote or for the Court to convene before handing down his verdict. The consumer ‘votes’ each time he buys one article and rejects another.”

:mad:

Interesting article. K&R

[immoderate]

5. Good article.

I have posted several times about my perception that there is not enough real work to go around. I have proposed a shorter work week -- as low as 20 hours a few times. Even that may not be short enough what with automation taking over a lot of manufacturing and other tasks.

Interesting solution was proposed by the Nixon administration. It's called negative income tax.

--imm

[Karmadillo]

9. Another kick because it deserves it.

nt

[amborin]

10. and then all that stuff dumped in the garbage dumps to pollute for eons

[Ignis]

11. Thanks for posting this. Interesting article.

It's hard to make this argument without being labeled a Neo-Luddite, but this article does a fair job.