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Looking
Forward. By Michael
Albert and Robin Hahnel 4.
Participatory Consumption
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Ring out old shapes of foul disease, Ring out the narrowing lust
for gold; Ring out the thousand wars of old, Ring in the thousand years of
peace. -Alfred North Tennyson Collected Works
I am an invisible man.... I am a man of substance, of flesh and bone, fiber
and liquids--and I might even be said to possess a mind. I am invisible,
understand, simply because people refuse to see me. -Ralph Ellison The Invisible Man
Buying and selling is essentially antisocial. -Edward Bellamy Looking
Backward
Suspicion is the companion of mean souls, and
the bane of all good society. -Thomas Paine Common
Sense |
The Participatory Case
Some Martin
Luther King county citizens will live alone and others in traditional families.
Some will live with a few friends and others will live in "co-housing
communities" where many dwellings band together as a larger whole to
collectively share various resources, responsibilities, etc. All these
different kinds of living units will be members of their neighborhood
consumption council. As one of the
more collective forms of living group people might choose, what might a
co-housing community be like? Emma Goldman community
(EG) has sixty-seven members, of whom thirty-five range from a few months to
seventeen-years-old. Of the thirty-two "adults," twenty-four are
"coupled" and eight "uncoupled." Eight of the children
have biological parents living as a couple in the complex. Another twelve
have both biological parents living in the complex but not
"coupled." Nine of the remaining fifteen children have one
biological parent living with them and the other either deceased or living
elsewhere. Four of the children have a biological parent or parents who live
elsewhere, but none in the complex.
EG community
has households of various types. A quarter of the couples are gay and many
people live in extended families. The complex has a children's quarter and an
adult-quarter where children and adults can enjoy privacy from one another.
The community's households all have pleasant individual living quarters and
adequate kitchen facilities, but EG also has a dining hall, collective sports
equipment, a large library and entertainment center, a collective laundry
room, and a computer center. The EG
community meets regularly to adopt and update consumption plans, coordinate
schedules for day care, shopping, and other tasks that exploit economies of
scale. Clearly, the advantages of the co-housing community lie in this
collectivizing feature-the sharing of tasks and responsibilities, the ready
availability of assistance, baby sitters, friends, and project partners, and
the advantage of not wasting personal consumption allowances on goods that
can be enjoyed more cheaply, efficiently, and ecologically when shared
collectively, such as laundry facilities, athletic resources, and high
quality hobby, computer, movie, or musical equipment. So what is
the situation of the individual consumer? First, he or she considers
individual consumption in light of already determined collective plans for
the county, neighborhood, and co-housing community, since these collective
decisions may greatly affect needs for private consumption. Of course, carefully
planned collective consumption does not relegate private consumption to the
ashcan of history. There is plenty left to decide personally, and we must ask
how this differs from consumption under capitalism. Lydia belongs
to EG community. She likes it because its membership, (which changes as some
people leave and others are accepted by vote of the whole complex) is in tune
with her own tastes. As with most communities, there is no smoking. People of
diverse ages, sexual preferences, and cultural backgrounds are included. Most
of the members of EG are into theatre, film, music, or writing. Their
collective consumption decisions are made accordingly, so EG has less
athletic equipment, science labs, and crafts rooms than other co-housing
communities, but enjoys a small theatre, above-average sound systems, photo
labs, and music rooms. Lydia
determines her personal consumption needs taking collective requests into
account. She also considers the implications of her requests for workers with
the aid of information generated by allocation procedures we have yet to
discuss. Beyond being able toconsciously affect and take account of
collective decisions, Lydia is also privy to the general character of her
community mates' private consumption choices because she is allowed to
question those that seem dangerous or otherwise antisocial at planning
sessions whenever someone proposes to consume more than a fair allotment or
whenever someone's (anonymous) consumption request is of such a character
that Lydia (or anyone else) feels that it is potentially harmful either to
the consumer or to the co-housing community as a whole. Of course, the same
holds for Lydia's requests, which are put into the public hopper and seen by
others, though without knowing which of all the requests they are examining
is hers. Because Lydia has to propose her consumption yearly doesn't mean she
cannot change her requests when need arises. Participatory consumption
welcomes regular updates of plans. Yet Lydia must get her food, furniture,
clothes, and whatever else somewhere.
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