{"resolved":true,"match_type":"uuid","source_type":"original_book","book_id":"10f0f318-a2eb-4ea9-8798-d4fb0304f8c3","title":"Time for Things Labor, Leisure, and the Rise of Mass Consumption","author":null,"edition":null,"publisher":null,"year":null,"isbn":"9780674250529","requested_by":"printed_page","book":{"source_type":"original_book","book_id":"10f0f318-a2eb-4ea9-8798-d4fb0304f8c3","id":"10f0f318-a2eb-4ea9-8798-d4fb0304f8c3","uuid":"10f0f318-a2eb-4ea9-8798-d4fb0304f8c3","title":"Time for Things Labor, Leisure, and the Rise of Mass Consumption","normalized_title":"timeforthingslaborleisureandtheriseofmassconsumption","author":null,"edition":null,"publisher":null,"year":null,"isbn":"9780674250529","isbns":["9780674250529","9780674250536","9780674979512"],"parsed":true,"ai_readable":true,"document_type":"book","page_count":355,"navigation_url":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/ai/book/10f0f318-a2eb-4ea9-8798-d4fb0304f8c3","title_url":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/ai/title/Time%20for%20Things%20Labor%2C%20Leisure%2C%20and%20the%20Rise%20of%20Mass%20Consumption","fixed_page_url_template":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/ai/book/10f0f318-a2eb-4ea9-8798-d4fb0304f8c3/page/{printed_page}","path_api_url_template":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/api/ai/book/10f0f318-a2eb-4ea9-8798-d4fb0304f8c3/page/{printed_page}","read_url":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/api/ai/read/10f0f318-a2eb-4ea9-8798-d4fb0304f8c3","page_url":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/api/ai/books/10f0f318-a2eb-4ea9-8798-d4fb0304f8c3/page","search_url":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/api/ai/books/10f0f318-a2eb-4ea9-8798-d4fb0304f8c3/search"},"page":{"printed_page":258,"pdf_page":266,"physical_index":266,"physical_index_base":0,"printed_page_status":"recognized","page_sha256":"a214612f9feab429c0deea201b439099c28fdc93339ccad73447cad53372436f"},"chapter":"FOR","content":"All of these explanations probably have something to them. I want to suggest, however, that there is, in addition, a structural dimension to the rise and fall of the mid-century moral panic around planned obsolescence, which has to do with large scale changes in capitalism. Part of the explanation for the decline in worries about planned obsolescence, particularly as a matter concerning the morality of exchange, is that, from the later 1960s onward, the corporatist arrangements that undergirded the postwar Golden Age era of corporatist capitalism began to unravel. For reasons that are still the subject of much debate among social and economic historians, the relatively stable postwar order, in which economic growth was realized as increasing real wages as well as increasing profits, fell apart in the final decades of the century.103 Real wages, which had been closely tied to productivity rates under collective bargaining arrangements institutionalized by the state, started to stagnate in the early 1970s and by the 1980s had almost flat-lined.\n\nAs discussed earlier in the book, there is a tendency among political economists to explain Fordism in terms of the balance of power between labor and capital, mediated by the state.104 Mass production under Fordism, so the argument goes, entailed low unemployment, which made labor more powerful, and therefore better able to secure higher wages. The relative power of labor led to a difusion of purchasing power, which increased aggregate efective demand, and so supported the Fordist system of high-volume mass production. When the balance of class power shifted decisively toward capital, one of the conditions that allowed for a stable system of macroeconomic regulation was thereby undermined. But while this account certainly seems plausible, it would be wrong to assert that the Fordist arrangement just reflected the power of wage earners to push for their interests, for Fordism also had a vital normative dimension. To explain Fordism in terms of a particular balance of class power, in conjunction with a functional model of the state (its function being to maintain economic, social, and political stability) does not account for the specific pattern of economic growth in the postwar years. It fails to account for why labor tended to press for, or at least be satisfied with, increased income rather than more free time. Therefore, it does not explain why productivity gains were converted into wage goods, rather than, as Keynes predicted, a progressively shorter working week. It was the tendency for increases in productivity to lead to increases in real wages that facilitated the emergence of a mass consumption to complement mass production. And that tendency rested in part on an underlying moral framework, centered on the imperative of securing “fair” compensation for labor.\n\n258\n\nTime for Things","previous_page":257,"next_page":259}