{"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":260,"pdf_page":268,"physical_index":268,"physical_index_base":0,"printed_page_status":"recognized","page_sha256":"449cab5e7fa01fa3932a08796081cc4e7283fc5955d0da47d632884a577defec"},"chapter":"FOR","content":"With the collapse of the corporatism of the mid-century period, the last two decades of the twentieth century witnessed the rise in influence of neoliberal ideology. This afirmed the view that wages should be determined solely by market forces, rather than through corporatist notions of objectively fair exchange. At the same time, in the new ideological climate, the consumer was increasingly taken to be by nature a sovereign, self-making agent. The “manipulationist” narrative about the role of marketing in cultivating false needs consequently became increasingly marginalized.\n\nWhat does this history have to do with planned obsolescence? As I noted, insofar as the term refers to a high rate of consumer product turnover caused by rapid technological change, planned obsolescence did not, in fact, dwindle toward the end of the century. But the idea of planned obsolescence as a ruse of business to swindle consumers out of their hard-earned wages became increasingly sidelined by the newly ascendant neoliberal narrative, according to which the consumer is sovereign and consequently knows best.105 The pointed concern with planned obsolescence, construed as an act of business, directed against the consumer, is then a peculiarly mid-century phenomenon, which has much to do with Fordism as a particular kind of moral order.\n\nI would suggest that the timing of the emergence of the concern over planned obsolescence, as well as the timing of its decline, makes sense, therefore, when put in the context of these changes in the broader character of capitalism. The disquiet about the specter of planned obsolescence coincided with the coalescing of the postwar industrial order—the so-called Golden Age. In that period of the history of capitalism, labor entered into a relatively stable (although often fractious) agreement with business, and the legitimacy of capitalism in general became hinged on the notion that increases in productivity would be shared with workers through increasing real wages, supported by conventions of collective bargaining in industry. This compact between wage earners and their employers was not an easy one, and consumers, who were almost always also wage workers, suspected that the value of the real wage—the purchasing power they received in exchange for their labor—was being eroded by big business employing strategies of planned obsolescence to deprive them of the full use power of the things they bought. In this sense, worries about planned obsolescence were of a piece with worries about inflation eroding the buying power of wages. Much of the energy behind the moral panic about planned obsolescence derived from the suspicion that what capital gives to wage earners with one hand (an increasing nominal wage) is, through planned obsolescence, surreptitiously taken away by the other, through shoddily produced products, or as psychological tricks were deployed to prompt consumers to needlessly replace perfectly good repositories of use value.106 At the root of the concern about planned obsolescence during the “Golden Age” were worries that the labor given at work would not be commensurately compensated. The standardized goods aforded by the wage were suspected of being deliberately deprived of adequate amounts of potential use value, and would, therefore, fail to measure up to the free activity lost through labor. The very strong reaction against the specter of planned obsolescence thus reflected the moral economy, centered on wage labor commensuration, that organized postwar economic life. And when the socioeconomic conditions underlying that moral economy began to fall apart in the last quarter of the century, its normative force became attenuated, and consequently the concern about planned obsolescence faded.\n\n260\n\nTime for Things","previous_page":259,"next_page":261}