compass DIRECTION FOR THE DEMOCRATIC LEFT think PIECE Can Citizens or Consumers make a New Moral World?

March 2013 Noel Thompson

Thinkpiece No. 76 www.compassonline.org.uk thinkPIECE compass DIRECTION FOR THE DEMOCRATIC LEFT

Can Citizens or Consumers make a New Moral World?

by Noel Thompson

Compass would like to thank Anne Bethell for helping to proof and edit this thinkpiece.

Compass Thinkpieces are intended to create real debate and discussion around the key issues facing the democratic left - however the views expressed in these publications are not a statement of Compass policy. A New Moral World www.compassonline.org.uk PAGE 1

aspirations that threaten to occlude class dear and therefore integral to the act of Can Citizens consciousness. In this latter respect, consumption. Like Cicero, many doubted consumption has frequently been viewed whether anything honourable could come by socialist writers as having deflected the out of a shop. In this regard, buying and or Consumers working class from its historic selling were often seen as a zero sum transformational mission. game, with those involved in it, by definition, make a New unproductive; securing their profits and Working-class consumers in particular have other gains by subterfuge, blandishment all too often been seen by socialist political and misrepresentation. Indeed the whole Moral World? economists as disappointingly malleable system of distributing goods by means of beings: easily induced to ill-advised and monetary exchange was seen as by Noel Thompson irrational consumption; consumed by and characterized by a complexity designed to consuming distinctively capitalist values obfuscate the nature of transactions; as Professor Noel Thompson is currently a along with the system’s products; unable to wasteful in terms of the unnecessary Pro Vice Chancellor at Swansea distinguish between real and false needs; multiplication of retail outlets and as based University. His research is focused incapable, or unwilling to consider, the on a medium of exchange – money – primarily on the history of British anti- moral and social implications of their monopolized and manipulated in ways that capitalist and socialist political economy purchases and failing, in consequence, to manifestly disadvantaged the working- in the nineteenth and twentieth effect a socially optimal allocation of class consumer in particular. centuries and he is the author of a resources. In these respects the consumer number of major monographs including has been regarded as falling well short of Whether for reasons of electoral advantage Left in the wilderness, the political the neoclassical ideal of the sovereign, or from real ideological commitment, or a economy of British democratic socialism rational utility maximiser. combination of the two, there was, after since 1979, 2002 and Political economy In this context capitalism has been seen by 1945, a greater willingness to embrace, or and the Labour Party, 2006. His current many as moulding and corrupting tastes at least accommodate, individual research is focused on the consumer with advertising. While the repetitive, consumers and their aspirations. and consumption in British socialist mindless and intellectually atrophying Crosland’s The Future of Socialism, 1956, political economy and will be published labour demanded by capitalist methods of articulated a more consumer-friendly by Oxford University Press as a production have been viewed as creating position. For Crosland there was no monograph in 2014. what John Burns, the late-nineteenth, early necessary incompatibility between social twentieth century socialist and trade union democracy and hedonism; indeed without leader, termed a `poverty of desire’; some accommodation of the latter, the something which manifested itself in a former would assume that lacklustre and ver some two centuries those craving for any relief – be it through drink, monochrome character which its critics who have contributed to the gambling or shoddy entertainment - from frequently attributed to it. corpus of British socialist political the anomie and alienation which such O labour induced. i More radically, in the late 1980s and early economy have wrestled with the ideological challenge of accommodating the consumer 1990s, writers such as Paul Hirst in Britain, and the business of private consumption Integral to the socialist consideration of Charles Sable and Michael Piore, in the within their political economies. For many, consumption has been its discussion of United States, and John Mathews in the act of consumption has been seen as luxury. Luxury consumption has been seen Australia, saw in what they termed Post- quintessentially individualistic and self- as a cause of scarcity, a driver of Fordism the emergence of an economic regarding; as socially divisive in terms of exploitation, as producing a misallocation order where consumption had acquired a the consumption of positional goods; as of resources, corrupting the nature of character and a potential to take forward ii utilising resources for private rather than labour by directing it to the satisfaction of the socialist project. As they saw it, socially beneficial public purposes; as the frivolous, as confirming social division, Fordism (the term derived from the having destructive environmental corrupting taste, as instrumental in creating achievements of Henry Ford) had been an consequences and as inflicting false aspirations and desires and as, a organization of production, dominant within psychologically or physically harmful labour distraction from the critical objective of twentieth-century western capitalism, on producers and moral and other damage self-realization through creative labour. which permitted long runs of standardized on the unthinkingly sybaritic consumer. products aimed at a mass market and had Such consumption has also been seen as Further, socialist writers have seen the laid the basis for many of the material gains reinforcing the boundaries of social class whole business of purchase and sale as of the twentieth century. However, these while, paradoxically, engendering false characterized by buying cheap and selling gains went pari passu with an alienated,

compass PAGE 2 www.compassonline.org.uk A New Moral World

Differentiated demand brought the possibility of realizing recognizably socialist objectives. Post-Fordist socialists could therefore portray contemporary discriminating consumers of customized, high-value-added, quality products as driving the socialist project. For such writers it was, therefore, the discriminating, hedonistic, utility-maximizing consumer, not the horny-handed son or daughter of toil, who would effect profound changes in the social model of production. The workers of the world need no longer unite, they could go shopping instead, and the revolution would follow swiftly in the wake of their credit cards.

Parallel with this, of course, the 1990s also saw the increasingly warm embrace, by key “Perhaps neither the Left, nor figures within the Labour Party, of a anyone else, should be excessively comparable apotheosis of the consumer; though one more focused on the provision exercised by all this; perhaps after of public services. The service user was two centuries it is time for good, and now re-conceptualized as a service consumer; no longer a supplicant but a even not so good, social democrats bearer of consumer sovereignty and to shelve the critiques and concerns customer rights. The provision of public services should therefore be made to of their ideological forebears and dance to a different tune. Where public make their peace with the consumer provision had not been privatized, its ethos and delivery were to be marketised; a view and his or her aspirations. Let’s just of things that continues to enjoy cross- go with the remorseless, party support – not least in relation to materialistic flow of contemporary educational provision in the HE sector. history because, at the end of the Perhaps neither the Left, nor anyone else, should be excessively exercised by all this; day, we know we’re worth it.” perhaps after two centuries it is time for good, and even not so good, social democrats to shelve the critiques and concerns of their ideological forebears and robotic and exploited workforce. And, by based on flexible, multi-use equipment, make their peace with the consumer and the last quarter of the twentieth century, delivering short production runs; it aimed his or her aspirations. Let’s just go with the the Post Fordists believed the productivity at competing through product quality, not remorseless, materialistic flow of gains derived from Fordism had been well- the paring of labour costs. It was further contemporary history because, at the end nigh exhausted. argued, flexible specialisation made for of the day, we know we’re worth it. high-skill, high value-added, almost craft But this crisis of Fordism had paved the forms of production. In turn it demanded a However, given our recent discontents, with way for a reconfigured and rejuvenated workforce with greater task versatility, skills significant numbers in summer 2011 social democracy. These writers saw that and decision-making abilities, creating the carrying the idea and exuberance of a with ever-increasing affluence came a more possibility of greater worker autonomy. shopping spree just a little too far - a differentiated demand and a desire for Furthermore, it facilitated the introduction contemporary consumerism red in tooth more customized consumption. In turn, of team-working involving task rotation and claw - it could just be that past thinkers this had made necessary a new, Post- and, more generally, where skill and on the Left, continue to have something of Fordist mode of production, characterized flexibility were at a premium, it required worth to offer. For a profound indictment of by what they termed ‘flexible specialization’. more democratically determined work consumer acquisitiveness perhaps a re- This was an organization of production practices.

compass A New Moral World www.compassonline.org.uk PAGE 3

reading of R. H. Tawney; for a sense of the between possessors and their fellow Many early nineteenth-century socialist human costs of a restless and puissant creatures’. Such consumption created ‘a writers saw things in a similar manner and consumerism, William Morris and John circle of false pride and antipathy, within were acutely sensitive to the social Ruskin; for an appreciation of the which sympathy is chilled and friendship disutilities and human costs that diseconomies of an untrammeled and destroyed’. Its objective, such writers multiplying material (and in particular unregulated consumer-driven capitalism, believed, was to provoke envy, to confirm luxury) demands could impose. the Fabian Essays of 1889. social division and to indulge in self advertisement. In this way, to quote Moreover as Owen, and many socialist But in particular I think Robert Owen and another writer, ‘time and talent are political economists saw it, market- the early-nineteenth-century Owenites may sacrificed for . . . unsocial objects; objects mediated consumption in the old, ‘immoral’ have something useful to contribute. For disgraceful to humanity’. vi world was also attended by social, moral these writers too addressed the issue of and what could be termed psychological consumption and its multifarious Such concerns generally related to the diseconomies. Thus the interaction of consequences. Moreover like many of their motives for consumption rather than, buyer and seller, consumer and producer in contemporaries, they considered the specifically, the objects consumed. a competitive context engendered and period in which they lived as a profoundly However, in early nineteenth-century rewarded unethical behaviour and transformational one that was creating the socialist writing, there was that of a critical discouraged and penalized those who possibility of an abundance that could form nature, which related to the latter. In acted, or tried to act, in a virtuous fashion. the basis of a consumption that materially particular, there was a belief in the moral, As Owen saw it, altered people’s lives for the better. As one social and political degeneracy induced by writer put it in the Cooperative Magazine luxury goods; a belief that had its roots in `The necessity which the present system for October 1827, Britain had, by that date, the civic republican tradition of the inflicts on all, to endeavour to sell their own ‘passed a boundary never before reached eighteenth century. Luxury ‘bred labour dear, and to buy the labour of others in the history of man: passed the regions of oppressive and disturbing vices’; it was cheap, contaminates and debases the poverty arising from necessity and entered productive of ‘infirmity of body and mind’; vii character throughout all the departments a realm of material abundance’. iii it was the cause and consequence of of life. In fact, no one who has studied idleness and it induced an intellectual human nature, will ever expect to find a So how did early-nineteenth-century apathy both in the sybaritic rich and in pure mind, or real virtue in society, as long socialist writers like Owen react to their those who, impoverished by the luxury as the business of life is one continued own age of affluence and what relevance consumption of others, were denied the attempt to buy cheap and sell dear, by the does their reaction have to our present means of educating themselves and their intervention of money, which is daily discontents? First of all it is important to children. As one writer put it, ‘the mental altering in value.’ x be clear that, for most of these early power of mankind is destroyed in one case nineteenth-century socialists, the arrival of by luxury and frivolous pursuits and in the Commerce, in the words of socialist writers, abundance, or a potential abundance, and other by want’; the two, of course, enjoying ‘produce[d] falsehood [and] cunning’; it the possibilities it opened up, was a symbiotic relationship. viii made `hypocrites of buyers and sellers’; it something to be celebrated. As one writer involved humanity in a ‘universal traffic of put it, ‘in wealth itself, however For that reason, and others, the artificial deception’. In these respects, ‘the individual superabundant, there is nothing injurious.’ iv stimulation of a desire for luxury was also system of buying and selling’ ‘train[ed] the The mechanization of industrial processes something to be eschewed. William human race to acquire the inferior mind of and the general expansion of productive Godwin, regarding the proliferation of what a pedlar and a dealer’. xi In consequence, activity had created, as Robert Owen in he termed ‘adventitious wants’, wrote in The buying and selling under existing economic particular recognized, the opportunity to Enquirer, 1797, that, and social arrangements made for social add significantly to the sum total of human antagonism between the buyers and sellers happiness. `every man who invents a new luxury adds of labour and, more generally, between the so much to the quantity of labour entailed buyers and sellers of commodities. In However, what one does not have from on the lower orders of society . . . If a rich Owen’s view it served to ‘engender a Owen, and other early nineteenth-century man employs the poor . . .in erecting perpetual covetous warfare among the socialists, is an uncritical celebration of the palaces . . . in laying out his parks, and whole of the human race, each one seeking joys and virtues of private consumption. It modelling his pleasure grounds, he will be to take advantage of the ignorance or was recognized, for example, that much found, when rightly considered, their weakness of others’. xii contemporary consumption established, or enemy. He is adding to the weight of rather confirmed, social distinctions. oppression and the vast accumulation of Such a system of private consumption, of Alternatively, as one writer put it, it was labour by which they are already sunk buying and selling was also an inherently designed to ‘draw a line of distinction beneath the level of brutes.’ ix wasteful one. Addressing merchants and compass PAGE 4 www.compassonline.org.uk A New Moral World

retailers Owen pulled no punches when he `custom, having burthened us with a would develop. As Owen put it in his wrote that, ‘it is evident to every one that multitude of artificial wants, it will be the Proposals for a Change of System in the you do not create a particle of wealth for business of the members to divest British Empire, published in 1834, ‘the society; but that, without any adequate themselves of all those to which they have articles of the greatest necessity and compensation to it, or real benefit to been subject. Economy, no less than the utility . . . [will] be first made, afterwards yourselves, you consume, in support of conditions for the development of man’s the less useful or merely ornamental.’ xviii useless, showy establishments a large highest nature, calls for the utmost What was to be avoided, at all costs, was portion of that wealth which others simplicity in food, raiment, furniture, the production and thence the produce’. xiii This gave a view of private dwellings and other outward means and consumption of the ‘frivolous’ and the retailers and retail establishments which so inmates on all occasions must ‘fantastical’. There was to be ‘no waste of was to echo down through subsequent endeavour assiduously to reduce the labor, materials or skill attending to or decades of socialist literature. Such number of their adventitious wants. Their producing what is useless or pernicious. individuals were ‘a dead weight upon drink will be water and their food All things will be estimated by their society’ who ‘by the fanciful expensive vegetables and fruits, and they will eat intrinsic worth, nothing will be esteemed establishments [they] have thought it their food chiefly uncooked by fire . . . their merely for its cost and scarcity, and beneficial to form’ render ‘[you] useless clothing will be that best adapted to man, fashions of any kind will have no and extravagant consumers of wealth’. xiv without reference to fashion and caprice: existence.’ xix and of one common texture.’ xv For Owen and the Owenites buying and Consumption was to be rational selling should therefore take place on the Communitarians should ‘sleep on consumption. Communitarians would enjoy ‘basis of labour for labour’. This would mattresses without down or feathers, and ‘healthy, enlightened, superior . . . ensure fairness and end the scramble for they will rise and retire early’. As to pleasures’. Communities would ‘minister to advantage that characterized existing ‘personal ablutions’, these would ‘be done the comfort and gratification of rational arrangements. Owen sought to completely, healthfully, and joyously by beings’. They would make available ‘every operationalize such a system of exchange means of a shower or plunging bath direct thing that can contribute to the through the creation of labour exchanges, from a pure spring’. As to food, all would improvement of men’. As to the such as those established in London and ‘eat from one board, spread with due consumption of leisure time this would be Birmingham in the early 1830s. Ideally, regard to simplicity and purity’. Concordists given over to ‘rational recreation and social however, goods should be distributed, would, in the words of the prospectus also enjoyment’ with communities furnishing unmediated by exchange, on the basis of ‘enjoy simple meals to leave the intellect ‘ample leisure for intellectual improvement need. Therein lay one of the great clear’. xvi and social intercourse’ xx attractions of the cooperative communities favoured and indeed established by Owen However, most early nineteenth-century It would be communities, as communities, and others. The creation of such socialist writers would have eschewed such that would determine the pattern of communities would render exchanges and extremes of frugality and self-denial. individual consumption. They would judge their attendant infrastructure and Rather, while accepting that consumption what it was acceptable and what it was diseconomies defunct. should serve ‘the development of man’s less, or unacceptable to consume. The highest nature’, they believed that the criteria they applied would be essentially But more generally, how was consumption potential for material abundance should be utilitarian; that is the maximization of social to be dealt with in the context of a socialist fully realized and embraced. So, for Robert utility from available scarce resources. community or socialist commonwealth? Owen, communities should produce, ‘a full However, it was believed that the favourable How would and could the dangers attached supply of those things which are necessary effect of inhabiting a community would to consumption, which socialists had so and the most beneficial for human nature. ensure that individual consumer choice clearly identified within the existing scheme That which is best for human nature could increasingly be relied on to be both of things, be eliminated or elided? There [being] agreed upon at the formation of the rational and socially enlightened. was, in some of the socialist literature of the establishment;’ xvii namely at the formation Consumer sovereignty, within cooperative early nineteenth-century period, a distinctly of the cooperative community. communities, was therefore predicated on ascetic response to these questions; one the socialization, and therefore that saw a solution in frugality and the strict Individual consumption would therefore be moralization, of individual choice. limitation of desire. Such a view is apparent, mediated by social or, more accurately, for example, in a pamphlet of the Ham communitarian, judgments as to its utility. The objective of most early nineteenth- Common Concordists who sought to These would be reflected in the way in century communitarian socialists was not establish a cooperative community on Ham which the productive capacity of so much to constrain as to educate desire Common, in Surrey, in the early 1840s. As communities would be organized and the through the formation of human character. their prospectus put it, manner in which they, and that capacity, For Owen, ‘no one can doubt that it is for compass A New Moral World www.compassonline.org.uk PAGE 5

the interest of mankind that abundance of Community, published in 1830, mentioned `lofty with circular ceilings. In each [are] the most useful and intrinsically valuable its ‘quadrangle . . . [being] laid out in suspended two magnificent chandeliers of products should be created with the least shrubberies, flower gardens and pleasure exquisitely cut glass, which in winter [are] labor and the greatest benefit to the grounds, scientifically arranged so that the lighted with gas, producing a splendid producers and consumers’. xxi At the same gratifications of the gardens may be effect; the panels of the rooms [are] fawn time, however, he wrote, ‘every individual combined with new accessions of colour with gold beading and the curtains should be trained to be capable of enjoying information, and the means of inculcating of a rich crimson, tastefully disposed in in the highest degree the use of these precepts of order at every step’. In John festoons with a deep fringe. The roof [is] productions’. In part the actual occupations Thimbelby’s Monadelphia, 1832, there entirely oak, and carved in imitation of the of communitarians by being ‘greatly more would be ‘a colonnade where the richest Gothic fretwork. There are wines favourable to health and intelligence’ would astronomer can display to his audience the and liqueurs of various kinds . . . though militate against a desire for the ‘frivolous’, wonders of the heavens; the naturalist, they [are] but seldom asked for . . . the the ‘fantastical’ and the ‘pernicious’. xxii those of the earth; and the composer earthenware [is] brought to such delight the sense with the effects of perfection as to be superior to that of the But the pervasive influence of a music’. xxvi As to Owen, his imagined Chinese . . . Between the windows [are] communitarian ethos would also be critical. community would have ‘Assembly and slabs of the finest marble, supported by And of course, with the education of desire, Concert Rooms, Libraries and Reading bronze figures: upon these marbles [are] with the elimination or atrophy of demand Rooms, Museums, Laboratories, Artists placed large vessels of gold, filled with for ‘unsocial objects’ and with the superior Rooms [and] Lecture Rooms’. xxvii spring water and at every corner of the arrangements for production which would room [is] a marble figure holding a Roman characterize co-operative communities, With its social infrastructure, we have lamp suspended by a chain.’ xxviii would come an end to unnecessary labour. expenditure that would facilitate and And with that would emerge an expanded promote a consumption of leisure time that So: no physically and morally bracing opportunity and appetite for the involved self-development not self- asceticism here: no featherless mattresses consumption of leisure time. indulgence, self-understanding not self- and ice-cold plunges. One senses that the advertisement, and a use of resources that Ham Common Concordists might have felt Indeed, for many early nineteenth-century would encourage the cerebral and the a little out of place in such an socialists, increased consumption would, social. If such pleasures were about fun, establishment. What Minter Morgan effectively, assume this form. Rational they were also about serious fun through imaginatively conjures for us here is recreation would become one of the most the realization and expression of the something that resembles more nearly the important ways individuals would engage in community’s purpose and values. elegance and luxury of an English country what one writer termed, ‘the right house, than the austere Concordist regime enjoyment of riches’. xxiii For Owen, ‘the One might also add here, if all this was to which approximates more closely to that of operatives, or actual producers of wealth’, be predicated upon a personal an English public school. Not only do we would ‘be employed a reasonable time per consumption subjected to rational have the celebration of material abundance day in producing wealth for society, and restraint, it would be complemented by, but, crucially, there is a celebration of social afterwards in . . . rejuvenating their health and indeed lay the basis for, a celebration not individual consumption. Private and spirits by rational recreation and social of social opulence. Thus a visitor to the restraint lays the basis for social opulence. enjoyment’; these two things being seen as cooperative community imaginatively If there is a culture of contentment here it is integrally related. xxiv Consistently with this, constructed by John Minter Morgan in his a social and not an individual one. By the education department within an 1831 work, The Revolt of the Bees, remarks definition, therefore, it does not involve the Owenite community would be given the upon ‘the full supply of everything essential, consumption of unsocial objects of responsibility for devising and making not only to the comfortable but even individual desire. available the best means of recreation; luxurious subsistence’ of its inhabitants. while the community itself would invest in The visitor noted too ‘the beauty of your In this context too, labour is not driven by social infrastructure favourable to rational walks, the fertility of your gardens and the market-mediated imperatives pursuits, designed also to enlighten and to parks; the convenient and elegant unleashed by private consumers intent on furnish opportunities for ‘intellectual accommodations of every description; and, the satisfaction of adventitious wants. improvement and social intercourse’. xxv A above all, the extent and magnificence of Rather the pattern and purpose of labour is commitment to rational recreation was to your buildings, notwithstanding the very determined and sanctioned by the be integral to the physical infrastructure temperate labour, or rather employment, of community as a whole. They are a and even the topography of communities. A the inhabitants’. In like manner the visitor consequence of a communal estimation of Description of an Architectural Model for a described the rooms of the community as: the social utility of consumption against the

compass PAGE 6 www.compassonline.org.uk A New Moral World

social and individual disutility of the labour It also reminds us that the nature and It is in this last regard that Owen and the involved in furnishing what is to be magnitude of our social consumption says Owenites surely have something important consumed. Consumption ceases to be the much about the society of which we are a to teach us, or to remind us of: namely, that expression and result of an individual’s part: its values, its priorities, its aspirations. private restraint may be a necessary buying power. It ceases to be a personal Above all it is a vision that argues precondition for social opulence. For some, statement of desire. It is stripped of its consumption can be, indeed should be, perhaps for many, such a statement may potential to divide. Rather, consumption of rather more about the democratic be unpalatable. For others it will surely this kind expresses the social objectives identification and satisfaction of needs and resonate with our present predicament and thence the social solidarity of the rather less about their determination by the where an aggressive acquisitiveness and community. As envisaged here, magnitude of an individual’s purchasing the untrammelled venting of desire have consumption also becomes an expression power. shown us the costs and consequences of a of that community’s artistic, intellectual, possessive individualism uninformed by architectural, in short its creative Those who advance such ideas must run any sense that there is such a thing as achievements. It becomes an articulation the risk of being termed intrusive, society. and a celebration of its values in both an patronizing and elitist. After all, this was the economic and, more profoundly, in a moral tone of Crosland’s rejection of Fabian Since the emergence of the New Right, and sense. The community produces for socialism, in the 1950s, accusing it of its political and ideological triumphs in the consumption what it deems to be of worth. elevating abstinence and a good filing last quarter of the twentieth century, Its consumption reflects its ethical raison system above the kind of consumption that public-expenditure-funded social d’être; what it is and what it aspires to be. mitigated or eliminated drudgery and consumption has had a bad press except opened up the possibility of `liberty and perhaps, at least until recently, when it has Returning to the earlier question of what, gaiety in private life’. Those who would assumed the form of PFI-funded given our current discontents, early make a bonfire of contemporary vanities, if infrastructural investment. There is no need nineteenth-century socialist political they need no longer fear the fate of to rehearse the provenance, theoretical economy could offer us. We have a vision Savonarola, must needs tread carefully and underpinnings and assiduous and well- that not only eschews the potentially have the considerable moral courage finance proselytization that has brought alienating asceticism of the Concordists, necessary to rebut the accusation of this about. It suffices to say that such a but also the consumer-driven discourse propounding a killjoy paternalism. view has impressed itself sufficiently on and aspirations of Post-Fordist socialists popular consciousness to influence and New Labour. It is prescriptive, didactic In the aftermath of the 1930s and postwar profoundly the parameters of political and, on occasion, paternalistic in character; austerity, Crosland may well have been debates on public finance and it will undoubtedly grate on some modern, right to trumpet the liberating potential of macroeconomic management and thence `liberal’ sensibilities. It also implies, if it does what a new material affluence could offer. It perceptions of what is seen as politically, or not commit, the modern heresy of was certainly politically expedient for him to more accurately electorally, possible. circumscribing consumer sovereignty, do so. But for many, in the industrialized In this regard a concept of social opulence questioning the notion of the individual West and East, we have now surely passed and the attendant notion of social consumer as the rational arbiter of how a well beyond this point to one where it is consumption may have some utility. society’s resources can best be used. It can necessary to recognize what personal Against the idea that public expenditure therefore be seen as anathema to those consumption has become and what it represents austerity and private whose primary objective is to win elections costs. Like Godwin, Owen and the satisfactions denied, these concepts carry rather than transform society. It is, for all Owenites, we must understand the kind of with them the notion of both social and that, a vision that might lead its adherents damage it can inflict on ourselves, on individual utilities. Indeed the former to challenge a hegemonic culture of others and on the environment. We must suggests the notion of pleasurable personal contentment that has surely recognize that it has become, for many, enjoyment and conspicuous display; played some part in recent events. less about satisfaction and much more though conspicuous consumption of a about power; that it all too often underpins non-Veblenesque kind as it involves neither Moreover, it forces us to think about the the creation, or recreation and emulation nor social competition but rather distinction between social and unsocial strengthening, of social stratification; that a public celebration of social values, social objects of desire. It raises the possibility of its prioritization is one of the key drivers of worth and aesthetic achievement. educating material wants not simply the consensus on tax cuts and curbs on What is meant by social opulence? To begin conniving at them. In particular, it is a vision public expenditure with all that follows for a with, it can be seen as characteristic of a that embraces the notion that social decaying social infrastructure. society rich in opportunities for collective consumption can have virtue, or virtues, to and individual creativity; with cities and which private consumption cannot pretend. towns characterised by the beauty of their compass A New Moral World www.compassonline.org.uk PAGE 7

built environment; a vibrant civil society which is conventionally deployed. It is in rich in possibilities for participation and this context, and to meet this challenge social interaction; a society enriched by the that the Owenite notion of social opulence diversity of its cultures and identities and might be deployed to greatest and most the opportunities for their expression; one beneficial effect . distinguished by the quality of its natural environment and one investing heavily in the health and mental/physical well-being of its population. This is a tentative and not an exhaustive list of characteristics but, as with opulence more generally, social opulence requires `lavish’ expenditure and, therefore, the commitment and consumption of considerable resource. Put more conventionally, a prioritisation of, and substantial increase in, social expenditure; though such opulence need not necessarily be entirely a product of the public purse. Expenditure that adds to social opulence could have a private sector origin or come from a combination of the two: for example the legacy of the Olympics and Paralympics with stadia and sports facilities and sports infrastructure which, at least in theory, and hopefully in practice, can lay the basis for the health and well-being that is integral to social opulence as it has been defined. Beautifully designed, if privately financed, buildings could fall into this category. Heritage sites and coastal paths, the Angel of the North, nature reserves and areas of outstanding natural beauty, expenditure on culture and the arts, museums, art galleries, concert halls, the creation of public spaces: the potential list is long and justice to it cannot be done in a piece such as this; though social opulence is, of course, most heavily dependent on conventional areas of public expenditure: education, health, social welfare and the environment and iIt is here that its positive connotations can, perhaps, be most effectively exploited.

So given that in straitened economic times the language of austerity is focused on the public purse and given that, as has been argued, an increase in social consumption is predicated upon private restraint, such consumption, and what it can achieve, will require a justification articulated in terms of a radically different conception of wealth and what it means to be wealthy, from that

compass PAGE 8 www.compassonline.org.uk A New Moral World

References: [x] R. Owen, An address to the [xxi] Owen, A social system, p. 77. agriculturists, mechanics and [i] J. Burns, Brains better than bets or beer, manufacturers, masters and operatives, of [xxii] Owen, `Proposals’, p. 238 London, 1912, p. 13 Great Britain and Ireland, London, 1827 in G. Claeys (ed.), The selected works of [xxiii] Hamilton, Owenism Rendered [ii] J. Mathews, Age of democracy, the Robert Owen, 4 vols., London, Pickering, Consistent, p. 25 politics of Post-Fordism and social form, 1993, Vol., 2, p. 111. Melbourne, Oxford University Press, 1989; [xxiv] Owen, Proposals in Claeys, Selected C. Sabel and M. Piore, The second [xi] R. Owen, The cathecism of the New works, p. 241 industrial divide, New York, Basic Book, Moral World, London, 1835 in ibid., p.333; R. 1984; P. Hirst and J. Zeitlin, `Flexible Owen, Proposals for a change of system in [xxv] R. Owen, A developement of the specialization vs Post-Fordism: theory, the British Empire, London, 1834 in ibid, p principles and plans on which to establish evidence and policy implications’, Economy 241; R. Owen, A development of the self-supporting home colonies, London, and Society, 20, 1991. principles and plans on which to establish 1841 in Claeys, Selected works, p. 364; self-supporting home colonies, London, Owen, The social system, p. 77. [iii] Co-operative Magazine, 2 October 1827, 1841 in Claeys, Selected works, p. 363. p. 436. [xxvi] S. Whitwell, Description of an [xii] Owen, Proposals for a change of Architectural Model for a Community, [iv] Anon., An Essay in Answer to the system, Ibid, p. 240. London, 1830, p. 16 – the organizing question, p. 12 principle, as it happens, of the walled [xiii] R. Owen, The addresses of Robert garden in the National Botanical Gardens of [v] New Moral World, 1, 1835, p. 131. Owen, London, 1830 in ibid, p.140.. Wales; John Thimbleby, Monadelphia: or, The Formation of a New System of Society, [vi] Anon., An Essay in Answer to the [xiv] Ibid. Barnet, 1832, pp. 20–1. Question, London, 1834, p.43. [xv] Anon, Prospectus for the [xxvii] Owen, A development of the [vii] Ibid, p. 46; Anon., Community of Icarie, establishment of a Concordium, London, principles and plans, Claeys, Selected London, 1847, p. 2 1841, p. 4. works, p. 375.

[viii] J. Hamilton, Owenism Rendered [xvi] Ibid, p. 7. [xxviii] John Minter Morgan, The Revolt of Consistent with our civil and religious the Bees, 5th edition, London, 1831, p. 397. institutions, London, 1825, p. 9 [xvii] Owen, Proposal, p. 246, my emphasis. One wonders if this is the first example of that socialist flirtation with the Gothic that [ix] Wm. Godwin, ‘Of riches and poverty’, in [xviii] Ibid, p. 248 is more fully developed later in the century The Enquirer: Reflections on Education, in the work, amongst others, of William Manners and Literature, London, 1797, pp. [xix] R. Owen, The social system, 1826 in Morris. 177–8 Claeys, Selected works, p. 70.

[xx] Ibid., p. 73; Owen, Proposals, p. 241, Owen, The social system, p. 71.

compass think PIECE

Join today and you can help change the world of tomorrow - www.compassonline.org.uk/join/

compass

Southbank House, Black Prince Road, London SE1 7SJ T: +44 (0) 207 463 0633 | E: [email protected] | www.compassonline.org.uk