Classical Ambivalence (1770–1870)

The century preceding 1870 witnessed the unfolding of the industrial revolution alongside the intellectual cycle of classical political economy. The industrial revolution changed the world by freeing economies from their tendency towards stagnation, yet it initially had little effect on the consumption patterns of the masses. It is therefore unsurprising that, in an era still heavily marked by scarcity and deprivation, political economists from Adam Smith to Karl Marx lacked a coherent vision of consumer society. What these economists did possess, however, was a set of intuitions concerning the world of consumption and its impact on human well-being. The most striking feature of these intuitions was their ambivalence. Material abundance was at times perceived as a vector of progress—valuable in itself and for its potential effects on the non-material dimensions of the good life. Yet, in other instances, certain patterns of consumption were portrayed as forms of materialistic deviation. The most consistent articulation of these rival perspectives was offered by John Stuart Mill, through his use of the concepts of productive and unproductive consumption. The adoption of an analytical framework grounded in the notions of surplus and reproduction was significant in enabling the economists of this period to bequeath an intellectual map with the potential to evolve into a form of “synthesis view”. Just as important as these questions of what might be termed “pure” economics, however, was the fact that political economy remained open to the incorporation of historical, sociological, and philosophical elements.