JOURNAL: Middle Class Consumers?

Here's a bit of thinking for the new year. It may be useful, or not.

It's hard to imagine a more derogatory and less descriptive label than "middle class consumers"* for the group of people that created most of the world's massive wealth, rich technologies, and societal complexity. Worse, it's the type of label that limits how we talk about ourselves, which is particularly grievous in that it obscures a process that is already in motion: we are becoming something new.

What are we becoming? Here's what I see:

• Frugal. Elimination of financial debt and dependency.
  
• Focused on investing. In home productivity (energy, food, etc.) rather than global markets.
  
• Thrifty with expenses. New sources of low cost food, energy, security, etc. that are financially sustainable.
  
• Entrepreneurial. Energy, food, and more sold/traded/bartered at the local level.
  
• More physical. Not backbreaking 19th Century labor, but the nominal investments required to enable the transition. Re-skilling to accomplish basic tasks.
  
• Virtual. Knowledge work without commutes, offices, etc. sold to global customers via online collaboration. New skills in social software. Free agency.
  
• Cooperative. New geographic and global virtual communities. To share ideas, designs, insight, encouragement, physical work, etc. To build community platforms.
  

That's the just the start of a process that is making us more resilient and will accelerate supermpowerment...

Is there a new way to describe what we are becoming?

Comments

[fairhavenhorn]

Sounds like a revival of Yankee society. I see it too, but I wonder if what I am seeing is too biased by my New England location.

[franko]

prior to there being a middle class (in western european history) there was always a top/elite class and a non-elite class - i wonder if we are headed back to that ancient duality - and in any case, middle class included ex-elite and newly arrived from lower class, so it was never really that homogenous - but elites will always exist, either from monopoly of power or information or both - i do think the present global reconfig will change the roster of the elite between 2006 and 2010, and it may shrink it as well, but be under no illusion that the elite may go away completely

[Bill Moore]

Interesting post, and much of it gets at identity. I don't think most of us identify ourselves by our wealth or lack of, but rather or village, family, neighborhood, religion, job, etc. Identity is almost always a reflection of others, so as move forward into post modern society and there is more disconnectivity from what used to be our primariy social groups, what will become of identity and primary loyalities?

I proposed an argument earlier on another blog that kids join gangs in search of identity and needed social connectivity, because they can't find meaning elsewhere.

The same must be true to some extent for insurgencies, terrorist organizations, organized criminal groups, etc. We're all lose electrons until we find an atom to bond with. Which atoms will have the greatest pull in the future?

I'm far from conservative, but I think there is a danger in not promoting patriotism, the pledge of alligeance in school, etc., because we're destroying the identity that bonds us as a nation. How does the song go? Freedom is just another word for nothing left to lose?

[zenpundit]

The analogy to what you are describing was the preindustrial "Yeoman class" of respectable, middling, farmers who participated in the market (modest % of acres set aside for cash crop production) but were independent of it for the most part, having robust household production of goods, plus community barter and "borrowing & neighboring" favors kept track of in "book debt".

The last vestiges of the Yeoman class vanished with the slow deflation of the last quarter of the 19th century and elimination of statutory commons rights. Farm folk either made a go of strictly commercial farming, sank into tenant peonage or left the land for the cities.

[mindlessrabble]

As long as the elite can use the government to enforce bogus patent, copyright and manufacturing blue laws it will be hard to escape.

There are zoning laws to prevent home manufacture. Sharing information for construction design is investigated by the FBI (who could not find time to investigate Wall Street fraud).

The serfs of the middle ages did not handover their production to the duke because they wanted to; they did it because it was taken.

How will the middle class be able to produce; when all the branches of government are available to prevent it?

[John Robb]

fairhavenhorn, I too have deep (15 generations) Yankee roots. It may be a bias, or a needed perspective.

Franko, no doubt elites will exist within the larger strata. However, it is possible to see a configuration where we ignore them (as in treat them as damage and route around them).

Bill, identity becomes very strong when combined with economic necessity. Re: national identity, won't be a problem as long as value, in terms of political goods, continues to flow (if not, it breaks down).

Zen -- as always, excellent. Yeoman. Systems disruption as the equivalent of the Yeoman's longbow or flintlock rifle?

Mindless, there's ways to route around this. We are already seeing more local government support of this than we might have anticipated even a couple of years ago.

[BrianSJ]

Mindlessrabble
I think the answer to your question is that the government will be too slow to catch on, and a moderately smart entrepreneurial network will always stay ahead.
The FT recently had the headline 'music industry looks to internet to save it' or similar. After all these years of denial.
Am sure it is possible to stay one step ahead.

[June Holley]

It's not just New England. In Appalachian Ohio many more people are purchasing from the Farmers' Market, buying locally grown grain, canning, etc. People are buying CF lights, turning down the thermostat. Living lightly and loving it (not needing $ is freedom), but giving more to charity. Our entertainment comes from dinners w friends, local music, book clubs, hikes.

Our small yard-in the middle of town-is all fruit trees, veggies and flowers. I purchase only used clothing-and as an internatl consultant dress well! More and more of my work is done by phone, Skype, email, Twitter rather than travel.

Our town is reviving quarterly Town Hall mtgs, but instead of talk sessions we are helping people self-organize to do research for city council on new policies and initiate small projects.

Something is definitely happening. It feels really good.

[Duncan Kinder]

"Systems disruption as the equivalent of the Yeoman's longbow or flintlock rifle?

In The Awful End of Prince William the Silent: The First Assassination of a Head of State with a Handgun (Making History)_ by Lisa Jardine, she describes how the early handgun was a systems disrupter.
http://www.amazon.com/Awful-Prince-William-Silent-Assassination/dp/0060838361/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1230849338&sr=8-1/a>

Blurb:From Publishers Weekly
William the Silent may be an obscure name for many readers, but his assassination in 1584, at close range with a handgun, is still remembered in the Netherlands as a key event in the long Dutch struggle for independence from Spain. Born to a German family, William inherited a French principality and was raised under the tutelage of the Catholic Emperor Charles V, yet became the "father" of Netherlands Protestant national identity. Jardine (The Curious Life of Robert Hooke) places the assassination within the era's religious turmoil and espionage systems, arguing for its deep repercussions for security, diplomacy and warfare. Her scholarship is broad, as she dissects William's lasting reputation for tolerance as a product of the writings of his supporters and traces the technology, uses and symbolism of the wheel-lock pistol used to kill him. With modern references including 9/11, fatwahs and Tupac Shakur, Jardine demonstrates the pervasiveness of the issues raised both by this type of weapon and by responses to crimes of state. Some readers might wish for a more narrative approach to such a potentially riveting story, but they will enjoy this marvelous study of a single event and its numerous echoes.

[James Bowery]

zenpundit wrote: "The last vestiges of the Yeoman class vanished with the slow deflation of the last quarter of the 19th century and elimination of statutory commons rights."

I disagree. The yeoman class lasted until well into the 20th century in the midwest, as clearly documented by Tom Wolf's Forbe's article:

http://www.forbes.com/asap/1997/0825/102.html

You might be interested in my take on it:

http://www.vdare.com/letters/tl_081108.htm

as well as on the essential characteristics of the Yeoman class that seeds scientific revolutions:

http://jimbowery.blogspot.com/2007/01/yeomen-as-foundation-of-scientific.html

[fairhavenhorn]

Yankees were related to the yeomen, but they were also tradesmen and merchants. The yankees ran much of US international trade for over a century, as well as whaling, etc. Yankees were also the early industrialists.

This is an expansion of some of the Yeoman virtues into other fields.

[zenpundit]

Hi James,

With all due respect to Mr.Wolf, most social and economic historians of 19th C. America would disagree.

While there were plenty of people who had grown up with the mores and cultural values of the old Yeomen stretching well into the 20th C., they had lost the economic independence that made yeomen what they were ( Populism and the Farmer's Alliance movement was largely an effort to rectify that loss by political means). A few dwindling pockets of yeomen communities may have existed on in isolated rural areas but as a vibrant economic class of millions, no.

See Stephen Hahn's The Roots of Southern Populism, Robert McMath's American Populism: A Social History, Allan Kulikoff's Agrarian Origins of American Capitalism and so on.

[Seacrane]

The times they are a changing. What is coming is a shift in Boydian Orientation that will result in changes to the rest of the OODA loop; this will not be a reboot so much as a change in operating systems.

[zenpundit]

John,

Regarding the longbow, Henry VII relied on raising yeomanry militias as a device to centralize military power in royal hands. The alliance between Sovereign and emerging "middle-class" against the selfish interests of the "elite"(nobility) was repeated in many variations elsewhere

[WarLord]

Greetings

As energy becomes expensive and the global trade is much reduced, Localism will increase. Balkanization is inevitable in an age when states so bound up in fear of taxation stop delivering needed services and no amount of pledges or patriotism will save a hollow state.

How a web 2.0 world with its web of global connectedness and information fits into a splintered patchwork of governments and others will be big question

[Kris Alexander]

I think the biggest forerunner of what John is talking about has been in food, beer, and wine. We have been experiencing a food and beer renaissance in this country over the past few years. In many locales it is possible to buy "global" style beers that produced either locally or regionally. Ditto for food. I had high quality produce all summer and fall from my local farmer's market and recently had a long conversation with my grandfather about canning produce for the winter. I've also read a few articles about "Victory Garden" style local food production.

I think what we will soon see emerge is a movement to conserve and husband resources. Just like my grandmother, a child of the depression, could never throw away rubber bands and cool whip containers. We'll start being thrifty. We'll also start demanding that government be thrifty as well. This can work at the local and state level, but is doomed to fail at the national level. We will never be able to force the military/homeland security complex (of which I am a part) to live within its means. There is a good chance that eventually, the only services the federal will provide will be security related.

State and local governments that can adapt to the new austerity will be able to provide goods and services. Locales that can't will wither and die. Eventually, our country will be a few wired, productive cities surrounded by rust belts. That is unless we can figure out a way to adapt which John makes me more pessimistic about each day.

[different clue]

I think John Robb is asking us for a name that will be so compelling that people will adopt it for themselves. A name that will make the mind ring like a tuning fork. The name will have to stand between present reality and future possibility; and will have
to acknowledge the unfortunate bad aspects of
present reality without demeaning the people who are caught in the process.

The yeoman class is not what it was, nor is the Middle Class. A multi-billion dollar mind-molding "psycho-mercial" warfare establishment has spent decades working to degrade Middle Class producers into mere "consumers". Look at how many powerful people bray the word "consumer" from all different directions. So we need a Janus-faced word that looks back to the consumerism
we are stuck in and looks forward to the producerism we would like to reclaim. A word
connoting a long moral and historical arc we can identify with and get on the right side of.
Alvin Toffler tried inventing the word "prosumer", for those who buy the basic supplies and tools for household production and/or refinement of part of their own economic and survival necessities. Does "prosumer" sound too clunky?

How about "conserver"? As in...be a Conserver, not a Consumer. How about "deconsumer"? Steve Lagavulin runs a very interesting website called Deconsumption
which touches on some of these issues.
http://www.deconsumption.typepad.com/

If the suburban house is becoming the suburban homestead, how about "home steadowner"? If neo-peasantry becomes a point of pride; how about "neo-peasant"? Or "micro-peasant"?

If Suburbia becomes Suburbistan, do Suburbanites become Suburbistanis?

Post-consumer?

[sameasiteverwas]

"Is there a new way to describe what we are becoming?"

Awake?

[John Robb]

The key is that the tightening (frugality, thrift) and a shift towards the local provides a sound/secure/resilient basis for rapidly growing super-empowerment. IF done correctly, it isn't in any way a step backwards, but rather a chance to accelerate forwards.

So, a negation of the consumer doesn't work (although the media may adopt it). We are increasingly awake....

[jim moore]

If you want a name how about:
Freemen.

[James Bowery]

zenpundit writes: "While there were plenty of people who had grown up with the mores and cultural values of the old Yeomen stretching well into the 20th C., they had lost the economic independence that made yeomen what they were (Populism and the Farmer's Alliance movement was largely an effort to rectify that loss by political means). A few dwindling pockets of yeomen communities may have existed on in isolated rural areas but as a vibrant economic class of millions, no."

Fair enough. I think it is important to extend "Populism and the Farmer's Alliance movement" to the social contract that seemed to be de facto operational from the end of WW II till the onset of 1970s stagflation. Something happened as a result of WW II which _seemed_ to replace the economic rents enjoyed by Yeomen, due to their lands, with cradle to grave "company man" status. If something similar had been done under Henry VII, it would have been like replacing his tax on Retainers of the Nobility with a temporary promotion of Yeomen to Retainers of the Nobility but then, once their land had been grabbed by the Nobility, turning out the Retainers to fend for themselves.

[dryki]

I'd like to get back to being a citizen, a participant in a polity, responsible and so forth. Not merely a cow consumer. The system of "capitalism" - at least at the large scale to which it has grown - has taken over the political and social spheres and they now function only in service to the "capitalistic" system. Even if one lives more lightly, the grinding of the planet continues.

I don't know if "capitalism" can be restructured to handle and promote the necessary declines in consumption. Building surpluses - surpluses that enabled the liberal agenda of the past 200 years - isn't the same as dealing with shortages and diminished resources. "noconsumer" isn't enough. Someone mentioned "conserver". "Freemen" maybe. But I tend to return to citizen, because the issues involved in making LESS work, are all political.

[sally]

While we are in the midst of a recession, there is no reason for despair. Reactionary thinking driven by fear is unlikely to lead to lasting change. I have followed this blog for sometime and find that the tone is getting more and more fatalistic. Fear dominates the tone of the entries. Stop thinking like a sophisticated ...

Some context ...
... Unemployment is not even out of historically normal levels.
.... Most major crime categories were down in 2008.
... Living standards in the US and abroad increased in 2008.

Now for the major changes everyone and this blog is hyping - they wont last and are not likely real. Americans and the worlds population supposedly underwent a metamorphosis as a result of 9/11. Only fools believe that now. Americans attitudes toward torture have been more influenced by Hollywood (eg 24) than 9/11. More short term savings - maybe for a few percent of the population.

Finally, societies change via revolution, evolution, or decay. Revolution seldom produces progress and usually brings only corruption. Technology has never proved a means of catalyzing change. Evolution is merely the playing out of the rules driving institutional arrangements. Finally, decay is the result of zero sum games played by institutional entities. Where does your story fit in?

[Cavolonero]

We are DEVO

D
E
V
O

[WarLord]

austere thrifty Government fearful of taxation thus unable to deliver the services needed/desired is a hollow state in the making

In the balkanization to come austere government is an oxymoron

Resilient communities will need local government providing a hybrid of local/state/national services ie nursing homes, roads bridges, health care, etc high cost items

The Feds increasingly tax averse will soon be able to deliver only military solutions and security theatre

Austerity will be personal Gov needed at that resilent level will be spendy

[Cindy]

I absolutely detest the description "consumer" especially when politicians use it.

I'm a citizen. Get it? My role in society is not to "consumer". It's to take part in the democratic process, obey just laws, circumvent/fight unjust laws, stand up for those weaker than myself, raise a family and possess the means to protect my family and myself from all enemies.

A consumer has no responsibilities other than to consume.

[Darren]

John
I am a longtime reader and this entry really hits home with me. Even over here in Australia the move you describe from mass market consumerism to relocalization are visible.

I've made a start on a number of the points in your post by eliminating debt, growing some food, trading food with a mate who does the same and kicking off a new business. It is a website that attempts to pool various online services into a locally focused hub, while generating a small profit - www.livinglocal.com.au.

The societal challenges ahead are dauting but your thoughts have been a guiding light. Thank you.

[gmoke]

Farmers' markets and local food infrastructure have been purposefully rebuilt since the 1970s. Here in MA, the impetus was the the first Oil Shock. Governor Hatch commissioned a study on the effects of energy in the Commonwealth and was shocked to see that over 85% of our food was imported from many miles away. Because of that, he and Commissioner of Food and Agriculture Fred Winthrop (descendant of those Winthrops) began to support local agriculture. That support has never flagged in all the years since then. When we started there were maybe 18 farmers' markets in the state. Now there are over 170.

This is Gandhian economics, small group economics and local production or swadeshi. This is where development starts.

On the energy tip, in the 1970s in Cambridge we did solar barnraisings, some of which are still operating today (see http://solarray.blogspot.com/2008/09/old-solar-1980-barnraised-solar-air.html). Today we are doing monthly weatherization barnraisings with the next happening on January 18 at a Cambridge school and the Margaret Fuller Neighborhood House. Another swadeshi undertaken by a team of volunteer coordinators (what Gandhi might call a seva ashram) and usually 30 to 40 participants who learn new skills that they can apply in their own homes.

Why do you want "a new way to describe what we are becoming"? We are building on a foundation that was started at least thirty years ago and returning to a way of life that existed for centuries before the Great Depression. Gandhi's prescriptions for development based upon full employment and local production are being adapted to the American urban and suburban landscape. We might also look at Upton Sinclair's End Poverty in California (EPIC) program to see how we might apply these same ideas to industrial production too. I suspect you want a "new" description so that you can market the ideas and yourself. OK but I've spent my life working along these lines and don't see anything "new" here at all. I see only good sense and traditional community responses.

[John Robb]

Cindy. Right on.

Darren. I'll keep tabs on the new venture. As things move forward let me know what works and doesn't.

[moniker42]

I don't know what label I would brand us with but I have indeed been raising this question to myself literally all day and I am only signing in here to posit that I am thinking about all this.

[scott]

I'd like to think the descriptive word we're looking for is directly related to what the end state might be for resilient people in resilient, self-sustaining communities, in situations where outside economies in food and manufacturing are reduced or eliminated because "we're all set," to steal a Rhode Island phrase, and also because it is a modern effort at "creative, independent trendsetting," if you will.

In other words, I'd suggest that what we're all striving to be is "setters" in this imploding global system where "globalization will insure the death of globalization."

[different clue]

Gmoke,

The reason for a compelling name is to recruit new brains to the concept. All the names that have been offered here have been offered for free; and anyone can try anyone of them to see which ones are so compelling as to spread around for free.

So..conserver, deconsumer, suburbaneer, techno-peasant? house-steader? others?

[different clue]

...suburpeasant?

[Cavolonero]

Pleebs.

( Pleebs wash your hands after using the baffroom ! )

[WarLord]

In an aside as we discuss this new "word" I see the new idea of local empowerment really doomed to failure after reading all the negative commentary about the auto bailout.

The attacking of auto workers, people who like these yeomen work with their hands bodes badly for any new local resilient community. People getting their hads dirty are suddenly not held in much regard yet craftmen and women are the key to any local empowerment.

Lovely ideas are all well and good but somebody has to sweat and get good and dirty to make them real

Classism wil sink the new model and we'll be back to same old same old

[jeo]

People attack the UAW auto workers for insisting on making more than Honda workers, even if it bankrupts their company; for requiring that people be allowed to sit doing nothing for pay instead of simply being laid off; and for begging the rest of us for taxpayer funds to make up for all that.

Honda workers, on the other hand, get plenty of respect.

[different clue]

Yes, but are those attacks fact-based? Or faith-based? And why should Honda workers get paid less than UAW workers? Because Honda put plants into Right To Work states? By that logic, the Honda workers should get paid as little as Chinese auto workers; which
will be a live issue once the mass import of Chinese cars (Chery and so forth) gets under way in earnest.

[rick]

Hmmm...Neo Tribal? New Pioneers? Retro Pioneers? Neo Explorers? Post Idiocy?

I think I like Neo Survivor(lists)s, or some form there of...

I'll give it more thought...

[RabbitMountain]

The forces of localism are working hard, but they are not without their equal-and-opposite forces from government and big business. I agree that technology can act to superempower individuals and small groups, but it can also act to disempower as well. A case in point is the National Animal Identification System, which the federal Department of Agriculture has been diligently trying to sneak into state and local legislation all over the country. Another are the insane food regulations that make it impossible to sell "potentially hazardous food" (i.e., prepared/value-added food items) from anything but very expensive commercial kitchens, on pain of incarceration.

Unless there is some way for massive corporations -- and their paid hacks in government -- to profit from localization and resilient communities, these will almost certainly have to come about illegally. I suspect the word that will come to define and describe people involved in such efforts will be "terrorist."

I'm with Cindy; John it looks as if the three of us at least, are on the same page.

Citizen. An oldschool word with new relevance.

Created equal and endowed with certain inalienable rights, among them life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

Correspondingly endowed with certain inalienable responsibilities, among them defending the Constitution from all enemies foreign and domestic, preserving the ecosystems upon which life depends, abiding by just laws and challenging unjust ones, and creating or producing something of value to others.

The latter is the basis for economics: production for use, rather than consumption. That we each consume resources in order to live is a given, by virtue of our being made of physical matter whose state of syntropy must be maintained by harvesting energy from prevailing entropy-flows. It is not a given that we produce for others, hence this point must be emphasized in our responsibility to the whole.

Those who attempt to consume without producing, or consume far in excess of what they produce (lengthy thermodynamic digression skipped to save space) are properly termed parasites and predators. They range from gangsters in the streets to fraudsters in the suites. They include anyone who looks down on real work as beneath them, and anyone who views others as means to their own enrichment rather than as ends-in-themselves.

The citizen functions best in an honor system, and in a society based on mutual trust and personal integrity. Thus s/he eschews pervasive regulation and surveillance, lawsuits and disclaimers, and the risk-management mentality. The citizen embodies a work ethic that is based primarily on the desire to be a productive member of the community and embody certain values such as dependability and honesty.

I could go on, but we all know the kind of mindset and culture that are involved.

John, you don't need a new word with which to market this, much less an ugly and awkward neologism such as Toffler's "prosumer."

Use the term "citizen" and it will resonate from the Yankee culture of the east, to the heartland culture of the midwest, to the entrepreneurial culture of the west. It will reach oldschool Republicans of the Eisenhower persuasion as surely as progressive Democrats of the Obama persuasion. It will both tap into and amplify the currents and movements that are occurring across the country, and give them a productive common thread.

[Duncan Kinder]

Charles Dickens spelled out some of the problems with the word, "citizen," in _A Tale of Two Cities_. We might as well use "comrade."

The tale of the Mayflower resonates with me, and I'm all for building a City on the Hill. ( Although Eugene O'Neill explored the downside of New England country life. )

The problem with this Yankee talk is that it's too insular. I suggest people read Pearl Buck's _The Good Earth_ for beginning pointers on how Chinese resiliency might work.

[Duncan Kinder]

Actually, I don't think we need to worry about the term to call ourselves.

Successful movements often embrace the term their opponents use to mock them. The Gothic school of architecture, for example. ( As a professor of mine once said, imagine the "Hun" or the "Vandal" schools of architecture. )

I am currently reading about the Sea Beggars, Dutch protestant corsairs who sailed against Catholic Spain during the Dutch revolt. The Spanish first use the term, "beggar," to deride their Protestant opponents.

Actually, the tune "Yankee Doodle Dandee" was used by the British to mock American Revolutionaries.

So as soon as we are making enough waves for Fox News to deride us, our problem will have been solved.

[John Robb]

"The Citizen Movement" looks better and better. Duncan, very cool, as always.

[Aaron Black]

Years ago I wrote an outline for a Post-human scenario sci-fi screenplay. Think: Mars nanoformed not terraformed. I called the post-humans "Sentinels" to focus on the near-100% economy based on being information-observers.

Citizen is a good term. I like the term prosumer for the technical. As a long-time VX videographer I have an almost visceral understanding of the meaning of that word. A nice way to express the hybridization of the information-management superempowered ("King of Your Castle") domestic mode of production with the global division of labor economy.

[Aaron Black]

Duncan, the term capitalist was first used in a derisive way during the mid-19th century, until it was embraced, especially by Ayn Rand who elevated it to the Heroic.

[js]

It must be a New England thing. I don't see that much of it in southern California, not unless you go out of your way to seek it out. Farmers markets do well though.

[Eric]

I agree with some of the above sentiments that "citizen" seems too generic and non-distinct. "Yeoman" has interesting characteristics insofar as it sparks curiosity in the audience - it isn't everyday that someone calls themselves such a thing.

And it is advantaged in that the word has a history. Which, I think, makes the concepts inherently more appealing (and less frightening) to new audiences. "Citizen movement" is white label; "yeoman" is "Apple".

I don't know if "yeoman" is exactly the write combination of word and concepts, but for my 2 cents, its the best of the above. Kudos, Zen.