The theory of 'necessary annihilation', the analysis of the modes of destruction which societies choose in order to destroy their surplus products, just as the Indian tribes on the north-west coast of America once did in their institutionalized festivals of wastefulness, the potlatches, draws attention to extreme forms of consumption, the most extreme of which is surely war. But annihilation does not necessarily require a lot of time. What requires time, time for consumption, is more probably slow wastefulness, the forms of that which Veblen once described as lavish expenditure in the allocation of time for consumption by the sophisticated middle classes. But mass production also brought with it mass consumption. The fear of 'mass leisure', which sparked off countless investigations of leisure in which it was implied that the class enjoying 'leisure' for the first time was incapable of leisure, is a special chapter in the history of cultural hypocrisy.23 Even though this fear has not been completely overcome, particularly with reference to the passive consumption of mass media, the initial position still looks different today.
Politics of Time
119