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.
Tags: global warming, new frugality, transformative energy
September 11th, 2008 at 8:51 am
But large elements of the creative class is just a subset of the bourgeoisie. They worry about getting paid so they can make their mortgage and credit card repayments, rather than how best to help out their creative comrades.
This article touches upon the phenomenon:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/musicblog/2008/sep/11/1
So much of the creative industry is used by capitalism to serve its own ends. The creative class are therefore guilty of aiding and abetting capitalisms worst excesses: from designers working for Defence or arms manufacturers, right down to twee craft artists making tat to sell on ebay.
The creative class is not a homogenous class by any stretch of the imagination. They are the bourgeoisie linked by having occupations in what academics call creative industries. Some may realise they work in a creative industry, others won’t.
The working class always knew they were the working class because they were denied access to the privileges of the bourgeoisie - home ownership, decent health care and education, stable employment conditions etc.
Please, stop pretending that the creative class has anything in common with class consciousness, anything to do with solidarity or co-operation. I’m sure a film producer would gladly stab a bio-medical researcher in the back anyday.
September 11th, 2008 at 9:25 am
Martin Great post. Daniel - Nice comment. Not sure you can lump the creative class into the bourgeoisie. No question the titans of creative industry, Steve Jobs, Bill Gates, Hollywood studio heads belong there. They “own and control” the means of the production. But the 40 million or so members of the creative class, not so much. They provide intellectual labor - their intersubjective human creativity to the “production” process. In that sense they are like the proletariat, in their relation to the means of production. The only real difference is that the working class provided mainly (though not exclusively) physical labor, while the creative class provides mainly (though again not exclusively) creativity.
Back to Martin - I do think we are headed in the direction you say - toward a “new frugality” and a new set of consumption norms. This too, as Gramsci wisely said, is not epiphenomenal but rooted in the production/ creative system. Our evolving economy sooner or later has to come to terms with its waste and its limits. The response is taking many creative forms - the Toyota production system which you know so much about, but also new and more creative strategies for reducing and eliminating waste. The creative society by its very nature must be far less wasteful, in both resource and human terms, than its industrial predecessor. So we are witnessing a shift toward less wasteful forms of production and consumption.
This relates back to Nisi Berryman’s post. I see it all around me. Sure some people continue to define themselves by what they can buy, and how “big” it is - big house, big car, but that kind of vulgar materialism no longer has social cachet. You can see this shift throughout northern Europe and Scandanavia, on the US west coast, in Toronto and Vancouver and many other places. So, certainly we are headed there.
But the big question remains - can the creative class move from its current form, a class-in-itself, to borrow Lukas term, to a class-for-itself. Here I am not at all sure. Even though production is social, interdependent and intersubjective, the creative class is extremely individuated and atomized. And what institutions can aggregate and provide some kind of collective identity?
Then we confront the question that class alliances are so badly needed. The creative class is about a third of the workforce, the working class a quarter, the service class 40 percent or so. Some sort of class alliance is needed. And if you look at the past couple of decades, certainly of US politics, the wedges have been driven deeper.
My hunch here is the key to this kind of broad alliance also lies back in the concept of a universal human creativity. Its not just a creative class project it is a human-freedom project. Thus, I believe we need something akin to what my clunky, inappropriate language calls a “social democracy for the creative age” a real, authentic third way. It could take shape around two very basic principles:
1) That every human being has a basic inalienable right to make us of their full and complete human talents, and
2) That each and every human being has a right to the life they want to lead and to their own self-expression.
Looking forward to your thoughts.
September 11th, 2008 at 11:14 am
Tony Blair tried to convince the UK electorate that a “Third Way” was possible. 11 years of Labour (centre-left) rule has seen inequality between rich and poor rise (compared to the previous centre-right government), rather than fall - he failed.
Ironically his successor took the declining popularity of Labour to mean the public mood was for more individualism and less state involvement, and recently abolished a 10% income tax band for those on low incomes, to pay for a 2% tax break for those on middle incomes. This was immensely unpopular and is frequently cited by voters when asked why they want to vote Conservative.
This may be evidence that despite the atomised and individualistic appearance of western societies (pace Zygmunt Bauman et al), maybe a sense of social justice persists deep down. Maybe some people become so atomised from society that “social justice” just becomes an abstract concept that they can agree with on paper, and then forget about when they get in their gas guzzling cars or spend their money on non-fair trade coffee.
If an element of the importance of the creative class is the ability to attract (spatially) other creative workers, then surely this also works culturally or socially in that if (for example) the trend-setters and urban pioneers begin to take on board “environmentalism”, this becomes “hot” and then the mainstream follows. This is definitely happening here in the UK where organic, low waste, carbon neutral etc is a fashion statement. Whether or not this is enough to affect consumption patterns across the board to the extent that it has any meaningful environmental benefit is doubtful but the thought is there - the dissemination of “cool” may be able to change the mainstream’s behaviour over time.
Of course, “cool” has a very limited shelf-life, so there’s a danger that this fashionable environmentalism will do more harm than good when it’s no longer hot and then take a long time to recover; indeed rising food prices and the “credit crunch” has already halted sales growth of organic food in the UK, and I suspect more similar news stories will follow.
This is what I mean by the danger of the creative class aiding and abetting capitalism’s worst excesses. A lot of what’s “cool” and what’s considered “creative” is just lifestyle, PR and a product to be bought and sold rather than structural change that will dictate who gets what.
While I agree with the economic benefits of the Creative Class, I’m still to be convinced that it offers the long-term solution to the “social democracy for the creative age”. It might generate the human and financial capital, but where’s the heart and soul? Creative workers become creative workers because they want cash, even if it’s because they want to make beautiful art or music (that someone else can sell for them) or find a cure for AIDS (and get paid very well for it) - not because they want to make the world a fairer place. That’s what I mean by creative workers are just a subset of the bourgeoisie (maybe I meant “middle class”).
September 11th, 2008 at 3:09 pm
Hi guys,
This when combined with Rich’s comments on a recent Zoltan post is beginning to get to the serious questions that the coming global meltdown is bringing onto the table.
One, implicit but not explicit in Rich’s writing about creativity and the human condition and particularly salient in Marx’s economic and philosophical manuscripts that were first well translated in English by Thomas Bottomore and commented upon by Viktor Frankl in that fundamental text “Man’s Search for Meaning” is that the more liberated human beings are from the exigencies of scratching out a living the more creative they can become.
This then shifts the locus of value creation to “relative surplus value,” which are the creations of the human mind. I wrote about this in the following paper that I can provide to anyone.
M. Kenney. 1997. “Value Creation in the Late 20th Century: The Rise of the Knowledge Worker.” In J. Davis, T. Hirshl, and M. Stack (eds.) Cutting Edge: Technology, Information, Capitalism and Social Revolution (London: Verso): 87-102.
Unfortunately, it is not on my website but i will put it on today.
http://hcd.ucdavis.edu/faculty/webpages/kenney/articles.html
What I think is important is that every society has rewarded creativity and that capitalism freed this in ways that no other economic system has. Obviously, this creativity is freed differentially in different well working systems. However, as an overall observation, capitalism also fetters creativity of all sorts because some of it would work against the overall system at that time. Rich’s argument is that we need to foster and free more of that creativity. Some of this could be done by providing a social safety net that would allow people to venture out and take chances. We can see creativity being unleashed or fettered by even simple laws. For example, the toughening of US bankruptcy laws (which were among the loosest in the world), toughing of intellectual property laws which limit the ability to build upon the work of others (I do not want to enter the debate about the right level of IP protection here), of non-compete clauses in labor contract which California alone among US states and perhaps the developed world forbids.
The question is how to unleash and VALUE more of human creativity without having the “false” creativity of recent Wall Street innovations such as SIV, CDS and the alphabet soup of ponzi-like activities over the last 15 years (yes Democrats that includes you!).
The key is this creativity and finding ways to value it.
Martin
September 12th, 2008 at 10:00 am
“Finding Ways” to value creativity is the key. Just putting a “value” on creativity harks back to current discourse of putting a $ sign onto everything, rather than the “triple bottom line” of Corporate Social Responsibility, to use a more readily-understandable discourse.
If the state can resist sticking its fingers in the pie of creativity (like the chapter on universities in “Cities and the Creative Class” explains) and leave it alone as Martin suggests, and finance moves away from the “profits for shareholders at all costs” model to a more “social, environmental and economic benefit at all costs” model then we’ll have reached Valhalla and everyone can go and celebrate.
There are small signs that this may be happening slowly: CSR is beginning to become an accepted part of business rather than the realm of pinko lefties - although it’s still to my mind mainly a PR exercise rather than a genuine sea change (I’m thinking of companies such as British Petroleum trying to re-invent themselves as “green” whilst still being committed to extracting 5% more oil each year….). Growth in fair trade products is growing exponentially. Consumbers are demanding “ethical” products more and more. Here in the UK, for a public-sector construction project not to specify a “carbon neutral” building could soon be tantamount to committing political suicide.
September 12th, 2008 at 11:56 am
One more thing I was going to add before my son distracted me was to bring up the impact of fear, instability and insecurity on creativity and risk.
In the introduction to “Liquid Times”, Bauman writes about how post-modernism and flexible accumulation are characterised by more “liquid” and instable social and economic institutions - workers are expected to up and leave to chase jobs, social networking sites are meant to re-create real friends in real situations, “top pocket” relationships that can be begun and ended instantly have replaced long-term relationships based around commitment and responsibility. All of these lead to uncertainty, and insecurity and probably even the neuroses that are so prevalent now (a recent news story in the UK was the average age to begin experiencing clinical anxiety is now 14 years of age).
Worrying about losing your job or making your mortgage repayments isn’t exactly a fertile breeding ground for ideas and creativity. This is another aspect of the “Creative Class” work that I think needs to be resolved. Richard dismisses Robert Putnam on the grounds that areas with high social capital are introspective, insular, closed and inhospitable to creativity. Yet if you interpret the “open” society to also be insecure, unsupportive and instable then there’s a dilemma here.
Enterprise needs credit; bankers don’t like risk. Entrepreneurs need to take risks. Taking risks when you have no support network of friends and family around you, when you constantly read in the news of teenagers being stabbed in the street, when the daily headline is “more economic woe to come”, when employers want a “flexible” workforce - all of this doesn’t stack up to stimulating a creative economy, does it?
Then I thought about the renaissance in Europe and about how artists and thinkers benefitted from the patronage of wealthy nobles and princes etc. Sure, their positions can’t have been 100% secure, and their creativity was severely constrained by social, political, religious norms and prejudices etc etc but the model is there to make my point - security can also create the conditions to take risks and be creative, as well as competition, insecurity and pressure.
September 13th, 2008 at 9:33 am
This is all thought-provoking stuff, but it makes me consider more the difference between problem solving (for me, a reactive, job- or task-related behavior: we have to do it) and creativity (proactive: we’re compelled to do it) behavior. Aren’t the so-called creative class just involved in problem-solving activities? “We need a hit single, what can you come up with by next week?”
October 18th, 2008 at 5:04 pm
Continuing the thread that moved afield from whether the creative class will coalesce as a socioeconomic/political class–
As a graduate student grounded in work on political culture and social capital, I appreciate Daniel Carin’s comment about Putnam’s work. Creativity and social capital do not have to be in conflict.
In my community, as just one example, a new group called the Wonderground Collective put on a collaborative music/arts event as part of our monthly First Fridays Artwalk downtown. Their work absolutely contributes to social capital, by connecting people and creating/deepening the artistic network.
For more on the Wonderground Collective:
Blog post about them at http://spovangelist.com/the-wonderground-collective/
Facebook Group http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=89235680025
As another example, Florida himself cites my town, Spokane, WA, as one of the ones to watch because we have the presence of a research university (disclaimer: I work for Washington State University Spokane), other higher ed, a large medical community, and the potential to grow rapidly as a home to creative-class work.
WSU is a land-grant university, and as such, our mission is grounded in creating and enriching social capital by connecting individuals to knowledge that can empower them and improve their lives, from traditional agricultural extension to newer work such as our Center to Bridge the Digital Divide (www.cbdd.wsu.edu) that helps underserved populations gain access to IT infrastructure.
If university workers are by definition creative class workers, and their work contributes to social capital, then won’t creative cities become cities high in social capital?
Spokane is also high in social capital, with rich, dense interconnected networks among influencers in particular, and a communitywide tradition of participation in events such as Bloomsday and Hoopfest, service clubs, and the nonprofit sector.
I’m on the board of Friends of the Falls (www.friendsofthefalls.org), which each year organizes the Spokane River Clean-up to pick up garbage along the beautiful Spokane River Gorge. This year, artist and garbologist Gabriel Brown (www.gabrielbrown.net) judged our “most interesting trash” competition, then used some of the finds in an installation at the Bioneers Conference. To me, this is a perfect intersection of social capital and the creative class.
@BarbChamberlain