Creative Class

Martin Kenney introduced the concept of the “new frugality” here first. Grant McCracken says in downturns consumption shifts to “dwelling” from “surging.”

Roughly speaking, consumers have two modalities: surging and dwelling. In the surging modality, consumers have momentum. We have a vivid sense of forward motion. Life is getting better. Each purchase is an improvement on the last one. Clothes change with fashion. The material world teems with new features, new things, new opportunities, new excitement. We look ahead constantly, keeping one foot in the present, putting one in the future. The good life in America is always a better life. That’s the fundamental promise of the consumer society. In the dwelling modality, the consumer is not forward looking, but concentrated on the here and now. Now most of life’s pleasure comes from counting one’s blessings. This is a dwelling modality, because the individual is no longer in transit, racing toward a better tomorrow. Now the consumer is focused on what is good about what one has. The consumer stops anticipating and starts savoring.

We have to move from a surging modality to a dwelling modality when the economy suddenly “softens” and “goes south.” And there is no gear box. There is no single or simple way of gearing down from “in motion” to “in place.” It’s one of those deals where the consumer must perform his own “interrupt” (to steal a term from Information Processing), see that the world has changed, see that something new is called, identify what is called for, embrace it fast, and hold it tight.

It’s weird that in our economy/culture we go through the surging-modality transition something like once a decade …

After a series of bailouts organized in Washington and London, the truth of the current situation is finally becoming startlingly plain. We are in a fundamental economic, social, and political crisis. A new frugality will be forced upon citizens of the developed world regardless of whether they want it or not. The question for all societies will be how to deal with the extremely serious dislocations that will wrack our societies.

This will test whether, in the terms of Erik Olin Wright, the creative class will become a class not “in itself,” in other words, having its own interests, but not being able to express them, but rather a class “for itself.”  In the 1930s, the industrial working class in the U.S. and Western Europe moved from being a class “in itself” to being a class for itself and transformed the political economy. Can the “creative class” do this?  In other words, this is the test of whether it is a class.

Why must the creative class act? It must be the driving force for change. If there is no transformative energy, then we will have a long and brutish decline.

There are some things that we believe that the creative class will be for. For example, it should now begin to act, in its individual lives and as a political force, regarding the environment and global warming. As Rich has already spoken about tolerance, there is little need to mention that. Can we be “frugal” in terms of lowering our footprint on the planet?  Should we envy and want a massive 12 cylinder sports car? Can we do that?

I welcome your reactions and suggestions. In my mind, the new frugality is a mark of seriousness. What can and should we be doing? We must open this debate now.