{"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":29,"pdf_page":37,"physical_index":37,"physical_index_base":0,"printed_page_status":"recognized","page_sha256":"05f735aca7c395b0a8d0f57a84fee14d501c25c6df83b4ad827cf508a14bb8f6"},"chapter":"FOR","content":"2.1. The Utility Maximization Explanation\n\nBecause of the prominence of economic explanations for consumer and worker behavior, it makes sense to begin with a more detailed consideration of the economic approach.35 In the introduction, and at the beginning of this chapter, I raised some serious objections to the economic explanation for the pattern of consumption and work that developed under advanced industrial capitalism. There are, however, some responses economists could make to my criticisms.\n\nFirst though, an overview of the approach might be helpful. In neoclassical economics, human behavior tends to be regarded simply as an expression of preferences, with individuals following the principle of utility maximization, posited as a very general feature underlying and organizing human action.36 The commitment to this rational, optimizing picture of action is sometimes expressed in startlingly strong terms. “The view that consumers maximize utility is not merely a law of economics, it is a law of logic itself,” comments Paul Samuelson (1976, quoted in Ainslie 2001, p. 8), presenting an axiomatic assumption in the modern economic theory of consumer behavior in a standard textbook of modern neoclassical economics. Although the content of preferences and sources of utility are usually taken to be exogenous in economic theory, once a utility function is given, the assumption is that economic action proceeds in a rational and predictable manner.37 The economic theory of the consumer assumes that economic agents seek to optimize utility, and economists expend much creative energy demonstrating that any given instance of consumer behavior accords with this maxim. Consumer practices, from this perspective, are then most parsimoniously explained by the utility they produce for consumers. If workers, following an increase in wage rates, choose to increase their income rather than reduce their time at work, this simply indicates that the added utility for them of more consumption must outweigh the added utility of increasing their free time.38\n\nAlthough the neoclassical model of human agents involves many questionable assumptions, it would be hard to deny that modern consumer practices are at least in part satisfactorily accounted for in broadly utilitarian terms. Marx was surely correct to note that for things to become commodities they must be potentially useful. That certainly seems right as we venture further down a hierarchy of needs, to those that are more basic, such as that posited by Maslow (1943). Yet, as we have seen, the utility maximizing approach, when presented as a full and satisfactory account of the pattern of work and consumption under industrial capitalism, leaves certain puzzles. First, according to economic theory itself, the marginal utility of consumption falls not just for a given product—for example, for the nth ice cream consumed—but also for the set of all things consumed.39 If, therefore, consumers are simple maximizers, as the neoclassical model would have it, beyond a point, as productivity and hourly wages go up, we should expect the rate of consumption to begin to level of and, in place of further increases in consumption, one of two possible alternatives. Increasing productivity should either be converted into more free time (as opposed to increased output), or else the rate of saving should increase.40 Yet actual patterns of behavior under industrial capitalism do not conform to that expectation.41 Although there is variation across diferent parts of the advanced capitalist world, over the course of the twentieth century, and especially in its second half, increasing productivity in the afluent world has tended to be used to increase consumption levels.\n\nThe Puzzle\n\n29","previous_page":28,"next_page":30}