Consumption as production:
revising the concepts of
economy
Presentation at the the Conference on Sustainable
Future 9–10 June in Tampere
pekka.makela@lanserit.com
Tentative issues
When taking for granted that the society of consumers has
replaced the society of producers, it follows that:
- Consumer has become the central economic agent of the
society
- Economy can and has to be considered from the viewpoint
of consumption and consumers
- The new angle brings along a reverse power dimension
- Purchasing power is a potential power for societal change
Theses about the meaning of
consumption
The term ‘consumption’ has in everyday language and
scholarly analyses two meanings, the purchase and the
using up of goods and services
Consumption should produce welfare, but it fails to do it,
because
- it is the use of goods and money that creates welfare, not
their buying
- people are locked in consumption-intensive practises
- in present day practices the utilization rate of the means of
consumption is low
How to enlarge the use potential of
goods
In order for consumption to be economical (non-prodigal),
the utilization rate of the means of consumption should be
raised. Generally, it means that
- (privately owned) goods, particularly durables, should be
considered more as social goods or commons than exclusively
private items
- the (private) right to own and the (common) right to use up
goods should coexist
- the offering or usability of single goods should be enlarged by
favouring their durable, consecutive, multifunctional and
multilateral or multipersonal use
Further issues and consequences
Based on the market mechanism, production of goods
can adapt to such a demand that implies a broader
offering of the goods
This kind of production creates the material ground for
the new practices based on an attitude toward commons
New use ethics is needed when mutual use of goods is
practiced
The purpose is to better the social quality of goods
Innovations of use
In large scale, the question is about shifting from
exchange economy to use economy where use values replace
exchange values as a desired objective of development
and growth
Social innovations could be seen as innovations of use
which in turn would give an incentive to the increasing
number of producers to concentrate on maximizing
the use values in products
Innovations, then, focus on (a) development of the
usability of goods and (b) how to raise their utilization
rate
Networking consumers
There is an increasing number of consumers who have
reached the saturation point in consumption
The change, presented hereby, implies that the private
or individual use of money and goods, then, partly
merges within and among user circles or user networks
established by emancipation-oriented consumers
The ’archipelago’ of expanding and tightening user
networks is the scene or locus of desirable, sustainable
development
New practices –> new praxis
The combined effect of two factors could initiate the
change:
(1) increasing number of people that are becoming aware of
the global limits of the sustainable consumption (= cognitive
incentive) and
(2) at micro-level, loss of psycho-social meaning of overconsumption (= experiential or existential incentive).
The new kind of praxis would be made up by a combination
of practices released from the ’ostentatious’ or ’conspicuous’
aspects of consumption (terms coined by Veblen)
About the opportunity of change
Citizens of the consumer society have in their possession a
”counter-capital” made up of the purchasing power and all
the goods they own
Currently, the counter-capital is scattered into the possession
of atomistic individuals, who use it against nature, human
relations and finally against themselves.
As it is historically and socially conditioned, the situation
can be changed
Joining their purchasing power, a ”critical mass” of
cooperating consumers make it possible to direct production
toward a sustaining ground
References
Most of the concepts introduced in this presentation
(and in my full paper) are tentatively processed by Aapo
Riihimäki in his five books from 1976-2006, and
further elaborated in my dissertation which is currently
under review
My inspirers have been e.g. Veblen, Marcuse, Bloch,
Galbraith, Bauman, Baudrillard, Peirce, Lazzarato,
Warde...