Galbraith cont'd
The natural tendency of man, as manifested in primitive societies, is almost certainly to work until a given consumption is achieved. Then he relaxes, engages in sport, hunting, orgiastic or propitiating ceremonies or other forms of physical enjoyment of spiritual betterment. This tendency for primitive man to achieve contentment has been the despair of those who regard themselves as agents of civilization and remains so to this day. What is called economic development consists in no small part in devising strategies to overcome the tendency of men to place limits on their objectives as regards income and thus on their efforts. Commodities involving physical and progressive addiction were long considered expecially useful in this regard; this explains the great esteem that attached, in the early stages of modern civilization, to tobacco, alcohol, coca and opium as trade goods for more primitive peoples so-called, a value that they have not entirely lost in the present day. However, goods which by their novelty appeal to vanity or to emulative or competitive adornment or display are now considered more legitimate. Also, though need for food and shelter, especially in benign climates, is rather readily satisfied, the pressures of emulation and competition in adornment and display have no clear terminal point. California farmers and labor contractors once, as a matter of established policy, encouraged their Filipino workers to invest heavily in clothing. The pressure of debt and the pressure on each to emulate the most extravagant quickly converted these happy and easygoing people into a modern and reliable work force. In all underdeveloped countries, the acquisitive desires and resulting physical effort inspired by the introduction of modern consumer goods -- cosmetics, motor scooters, transistor radios, canned food, bicycles, phonograph records, movies, American cigarettes -- are recognized to be of the highest importance in the strategy of economic development.
In the advanced industrial countries, the creation of wants, and therewith the need to work, is a matter of considerable sophistication but the principles are the same. It is also a task of great importance. In 1939, the real income of employed workers in the United States was very nearly the highest on record, and it was then the highest of any country in the world. In the next quarter century it doubled. Had the 1939 income been a terminal objective, work effort would have been cut in half in the ensuing twenty-five years. In fact, there was a slight increase in weekly hours actually worked. This was a remarkable achievement.
It was accomplished partly by the now well-understood ability of the planning system to adapt belief to its needs. To increase income and consumption is held to be socially and morally sound. Leisure is something to be regarded with misgiving, especially in lower income brackets. Accordingly, a reduction in the standard work week must always be considered dubious social policy, inducing moral or spiritual weakness.
Economists, performing one of their now well-recognized functions, have accorded important canonical reinforcement to these beliefs. They have made the rate of increase in the production of goods the prime test of social achievement. To substitute leisure for work is, thus, to be antisocial. Economic theory has long insisted on the homogeneity and insatiability of wants. There is no proof that an expensive woman obtains the same satisfaction from yet another gown as does a hungry man from a hamburger. But there is no proof that she does not. Since it cannot be proven that she does not, her desire, it is held, must be accorded equal standing with that of a poor man for meat. Doctoral aspirants in economics stil risk failure and, at a minimum, get a warning rebuke if they assert otherwise. If all wants are of equally good standing, it follows that the moral and social obligation to work to fill them remains undiminished in power no matter how much is produced. Corporate executives with an overly acute sense of persecution have sometimes supposed that economists, in the ideas they advance, are their enemies. In fact, the economics profession is strongly in the service of the beliefs they most need. It would, prima facie, be plausible to set a limit on the national product that a nation requires. The test of economic achievement would then be how rapidly it could reduce the number of hours of toil that are needed to meet this requirement. Were economists to advocate this goal, with the revolutionary effects that it would have on the planning system, there would be grounds for complaint. None has been so uncooperative.
However, the more immediate device for ensuring that there is no terminal objective as regards income is advertising and the related arts of salesmanship. Here we have yet another of the interlocking developments which so admirably serve the planning system. Advertising and salesmanship -- the management of consumer demand -- are vital for planning in the planning system. At the same time, the wants so created ensure the services of the worker. Ideally, his wants are kept slightly in excess of his income. Compelling inducements are then provided for him to go into debt. The pressure of the resulting debt adds to his reliability as a worker.
It is held, of course, that wants are not contrived. They are deeply organic in the human situation. Their satisfaction is not only a source of rich reward to those served but the highest secular function of the society. Even to hold this process up for examination is to invite the suggestion that one is ascetic, unworldly, determinedly impractical and disposed to substitute one's own odd and esoteric values for the lustier instincts of the masses. Yet one cannot have it both ways. If wants are inherent, they need not be contrived. But few producers of consumer goods would care to leave the purchases of their products to the spontaneous and hence unmanaged responses of the public. Nor, on reflection, would they have much confidence in the reliability of their labor force in the absence of pressure to purchase the next car or to meet the payments on the last.
[further footnote]
Professional advertising men, who, as earlier noted, have wished for a substantial social justification for their services, have frequently argued that, without their efforts to stimulate wants, men would not work and the economy would falter. Economists, almost without exception, have dismissed this as the special pleading of an economically unlearned and conscience-ridden community. In fact, the advertising men have a good case. It has been rejected by economists because to admit that advertising promotes wants is, not surprisingly, to concede that the goods would be unwanted in the absence of such persuasion. This casts doubt on the pivotal contentions that wants are homogeneous and insatiable and that the volume of production measures the success of the society. One cannot give equal status with bread to what must be contrived by advertising, and one cannot measure the success of an economy by its ability to keep up with Madison Avenue.
This entry was originally posted at https://graydon2.dreamwidth.org/287172.html. Please comment there using OpenID.