Consumer Behavior and the Concept of Sovereignty: Explanations of Social Decay
Abstract
This paper deals with the way alternative economic models interpret important aspects of modern capitalism. What is to be explained is the clear tendency of capitalist societies to generate vast quantities of goods and services-both public and private while social life falls into progressive decay. WAork remains bureaucratic, fragmented, and unfulfilling; communities are rendered architectural, social, and ecological monstrosities; the natural environment is destroyed; cultural activity becomes a mere passive consumption item in our daily lives; education remains unequalizing and unliberating; and the list continues. The three alternative paradigms I shall discuss are the traditional neoclassical, the widely held Galbraithian, and the more heterodox radical, with its heavy debt to Karl Marx. The neoclassical view takes social outcomes as the reflection of individual preferences, constrained by available resources and knowledge of technologies, perhaps distorted by ultimately correctible organizational inefficiencies. For instance, the undesirability of work reflects the nature of technology and the preferences of individuals for yet higher levels of consumption rather than creative work. The fragmentation of communities reflects the individual's preference for private expenditure over increased tax dollars for community development. And so on. The Qalbraithian views social outcomes partly as the result of the direct power of those who control large productive organizations, and partly as the result of consumer choices manipulated by those who control production. In short, while neoclassical theory holds that citizen, worker, and consumer obtain, Galbraith replaces them with a theory of producer sovereignty. In contrast, radical theorists hold that social decay is a normal result of the development of capitalism and cannot be reduced to the irrationalities of consumer preferences or the autonomous and socially irresponsible exercise of power by controllers of production. This radical paradigm involves two basic assertions. First, the choice-set of socially feasible options in the areas of work, technology, and public policy does not extend over all technologically feasible alternatives, but is constrained to those compatible with the reproduction of the social relations of capitalist production. In this sense, worker and citizen sovereignty fail to hold, and social outcomes tend to follow the requisites of capitalist accumulation rather than the preferences of individuals. Second, observed consumer behavior in capitalist society is a rational reaction to the structure of available alternatives for social activity open to the individual. No theory of con* Lecturer and research associate, Graduate School of Education, Harvard University. This paper was made possible bv massive doses of advice from Samuel Bowles, as well as helpful arm twisting by Keith Aufhauser, Andrew Barlow, Steve Marglin, James Medoff, and Ellen Willis.
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