Toward a producerist society
I’m sure I’m not alone in thinking that The American Scene’s Noah Millman has been on a roll lately. I meant to comment on this piece of his a while back but never got around to it. Here’s Noah commenting on Rod Dreher (and the Front Porchy, anti-modernists folk in general) and the consumerist society:
The . . . choice, then, is set up between a traditional, producerist world, in which what you want to have is not important, only what you must do, and the individual is subordinate to the great project of producing a new generation and passing down traditional understandings to them – and the modern, consumerist world, in which there is precious little you must do and what’s important is what you want to have, and that the economic wheels are greased to facilitate your getting it (consistent with not taking away from somebody else by force what he or she wants to have, my freedom ending where my fist impacts your face and all that).
But there’s an implicitly excluded third alternative that, humbly, is the object of my own preferred utopian yearning, and that is the idea of a modern, producerist world.
I enjoy third ways, and this one in particular makes a great deal of sense, especially when you take into account the thrust of information technology, micro-manufacturing, and other technological developments which make it easier and cheaper for people to produce for themselves. Right now that may be more obvious in the realm of self-publishing or home music recording, but I suspect in the future – as fuel costs rise and costs to manufacture goods locally become comparatively lower – we will see that shift more and more into other industries.
In any case, there really is no reason that the dynamic should be set up between only the traditionalist, agrarian types and the modern consumerists. I’m glad we’re having the discussion. And I think the Porchers offer an important and necessary critique of the modern world. We may be adaptable, and we may have a society especially suited to evolution, but it’s always good to be reminded of past ideas as well, if only to incorporate them better into our modern notions.
*Apologies for the role/roll mix-up. Mama said there’d be days like this.
I think the important porcher idea is that often the way back leads forward.Report
Unfortunately, many Front Porchers (by no means all!) embrace statist principles e.g. while they concede and critique certain failures in the contemporary political paradigm, they believe that their intellectuals can succeed where others have failed. Some of them don’t wish to acknowledge the good old “libido dominandi.’Report
Ahem. You mean on a “roll,” not role.Report
The end of all production is consumption. I bears remembering. That said, I don’t think we’re even remotely at the point of defining ourselves by consumption choices – most of us still identify first and foremost with the productive things we do.Report
First, I agree with Simon K on defining oneself by the productive things we do. At the same time, I don’t think the Front Porchers necessarily embody a regressive ideal. I think they share more in common with the ideology of Teddy Roosevelt – the quintessential progressive – in their opposition to corporate concentrations of power, and of course with the old right in their opposition to governmental concentrations of power. I agree with E.D. that they offer an important and necessary critique of the modern world, but I don’t find them to be against things like technology and mass-marketing, and any of the other neutral or benign aspects of modernity. I think what they’re saying is that what we usually see as unavoidable by-products of technological advancement, such as an expansive, regulatory state and corporate privilege in international markets, can be purged without destroying the system. Their policy recommendations seem to be consistent with limiting the power of large conglomerates and distributing this power in as diffuse manner as is fair.
Second, Modernism as a movement definitely had a anti-statist component in reaction to the optimistic pragmatism of the late nineteenth century. I think someone like Millman and the Front Porchers could find commonality due to these great democratizing forces like information technologies. This is the Modernism from which developed the theories of Hayek and the Existentialists, directly opposed to Marxism, Fascism, and even centralized and pragmatically-directed Democracy. The Front Porchers as such are more like “trust-busting” libertarians like Tolstoy, and while this ideology is prevalent in the intellectual traditions of modern America, it is almost completely lacking among our elected leaders.Report