Time for Things Labor, Leisure, and the Rise of Mass Consumption

FOR

LABOR， LEISURE,

AND THE RISE OF

MASSCONSUMPTION

Stephen D. Rosenberg

Time for Things

Time

Things

L A B O R , L E I S U R E , A N D T H E R I S E

O F M A S S C O N S U M P T I O N

Stephen D. Rosenberg

HARVARD UNIVERSITY PRESS Cambridge, Massachusetts London, England 2021

Copyright © 2021 by the President and Fellows of Harvard College

All rights reserved

Printed in the United States of America

First printing

978-0-674-25052-9 (EPUB)

978-0-674-25053-6 (MobiPocket)

978-0-674-25053-6 (PDF)

Cover design by Tim Jones Cover images courtesy of Getty Images

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Rosenberg, Stephen D., 1966– author.

Title: Time for things : labor, leisure, and the rise of mass consumption / Stephen D. Rosenberg.

Description: Cambridge, Massachusetts : Harvard University Press, 2021. | Includes bibliographical references and index.

Identifiers: LCCN 2020016849 | ISBN 9780674979512 (cloth)

Subjects: LCSH: Welfare economics. | Consumption (Economics) | Quality of

life. | Incentives in industry. | Quality of products.

Classification: LCC HB99.3 .R654 2021 | DDC 330.12/2—dc23

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020016849

Contents

1 Introduction 1
2 The Puzzle 13
3 Empirical Pattern in the United States 42
4 A Theory of Mass Consumption as Wage-Labor
Commensuration 79
5 Economic Fairness and the Wage Labor Background 123
6 Standardization of Consumption, Work, and Wages 149
7 Standardizing Utility:
Brands and Commercial and Legal Warranties 180
8 Product Testing and Product Regularization 197
9 Moral Panic about Utility: Planned Obsolescence 218
10 Conclusion: Capitalism, Commensuration,
and the Normativity of Economic Action 265
Appendix 1 273
Appendix 2 276
Notes 277
References 321
Acknowledgments 339
Index 341

Time for Things

Introduction

In 1930, against the backdrop of the Depression, John Maynard Keynes wrote a short essay entitled “Economic Possibilities for Our Grandchildren” in which he cast his gaze beyond the economic ferment of his times to prognosticate about the future of capitalism.1 Abandoning for a moment the shortand medium-run temporalities of his discipline, as well as the economist’s preoccupation with scarcity and dismal trade-ofs, Keynes became entranced by a much brighter vision. Economic growth would, in Keynes’s view, eventually bring about an end to toil. A renaissance of human civilization would ensue, a cultural flowering reminiscent of the classical Greek ideal (or perhaps that of bohemian Bloomsbury). However, this one would not be bought at the expense of an army of slaves (or a household full of servants) but rather would be secured through exponential economic growth. Keynes’s reasoning was straightforward enough. He simply took the estimated historical growth rate of capitalist economies and projected it over the following one hundred years. Assuming past rates of productivity improvement would continue unabated for the next century, the economy would, over that period, grow eightfold in per capita terms. “Mankind is solving its economic problem,” Keynes proclaimed—such, he reflected, is the almost magical power of compound growth. Similarly, when Keynes looked back at the trend in work time in industrial capitalism over the previous fifty years, he saw a pattern he had no reason to believe would not continue. Increasing productivity had led to a steep and continuous decline in the length of the work week between 1870 and 1930, with working hours dropping by 30 percent in Europe and the United States. In predicting the future of capitalism, Keynes simply posited the continuation of that trend.

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