Too Many Unnecessary Things Everywhere: Brian McLaren, Kohei Saito, Dieter Rams and Use-Value
“As people who have been shaped by the current empire–first the European, and then Euro-American, and then the global economic empire that we’re a part of now–we have to realize our survival now depends on disentangling our identities from the values and assumptions of this empire.“ –Brian McLaren
The above quote comes from an interview with Brian McLaren on Homebrewed Christianity (falling around the 21:50 mark). McLaren and Tripp Fuller discuss Life After Doom, McLaren’s new book that dives into the futility, frustration, and despair more and more people are feeling at the thought of preventing the arrival of an undesirable dystopian future due to climate breakdown. I haven’t read McLaren’s new book but I did appreciate the Homebrewed interview (especially the quote above) and I think another author I read recently, Kohei Saito, would emphatically agree with McLaren about the need to disentangle our identities from the values and assumptions of empire.
One of the assumptions we routinely make in the suicidal politico-economic situation we find ourselves in involves how we understand value itself, specifically: we must examine the emphasis of exchange-value over use-value. Saito, in his book Slow Down, discusses Marx’s concept of use-value with regard to the fundamental contradiction within the commodity form and how it’s related to the creation of scarcity. Saito writes:
“Use-value indicates the quality in something —for example, air or water—that satisfies a human need or desire. Use-value existed well before the advent of capitalism. ‘Riches,’ by contrast, are measured in money. They’re based on calculating the “value” of commodities and thus don’t exist outside a market economy. According to Marx, the logic by which value is conferred onto a commodity become dominant under capitalism. The ultimate objective of capitalist production is to increase this value. As a result, use-value is reduced to simply a means of creating a commodity’s value. Even though fulfilling people’s needs through the production of use-value was the entire point of economic activity in pre capitalist societies, it becomes completely displaced under capitalism. Indeed, use-value can end up sacrificed, even destroyed, in the name of driving up value.”
Again, in our economic context “value” is equated with exchange-value meaning we think of value in terms of precious, scarce commodities which are measured in importance according to their monetary significance; in general the greater the monetary price the more valuable the item is considered to be. The reason we do this is because we’ve been trained to think this way. Similar to what happened with the division of the commons in sixteenth century England, once some sort of method is devised to make an abundant, commonly accessible resource artificially scarce, the market can assign it value. Saito uses water as an example:
“Water exists in great abundance, at least in Japan and in many countries in the Global North. Water possess unassailable use-value, as everyone needs it to live. For this reason, it should be freely accessible and belong to no one. But water has become a commodity circulating in plastic bottles. Becoming a commodity has transformed water into something scarce, unable to be used without spending money.”
What should be clear to all (and what Saito points out in his book) is that an overemphasis on exchange-value has no doubt lead to various egregious negative consequences including the exploitation of natural resources, environmental degradation, and the prioritization of profit over human and non-human well-being. Perhaps by shifting the focus to use-value, as Saito suggests, societies can better address actual needs and promote sustainable development.
Prioritizing use-value, according to Saito, involves carefully considering how goods and services contribute to human flourishing, quality of life, and social welfare rather than solely their marketability or profitability. With exception to perhaps some Mennonite, Amish and Quaker communities, this would require a huge shift for most of us I’d say. I mean for crying out loud this would mean that someone have to take a moral stand at some point and make the call that no one on God’s green Earth necessarily needs shoe umbrellas or selfie sandals. As a designer, though, I can say that focusing on the usefulness and longevity of a product is something that I’ve desired to see happen for as long as I can remember. One of my favorite socialist, minimalist and utilitarian designers, Dieter Rams, agrees:
“What I am especially bothered by today is that, particularly in the media, design is being used as a ‘lifestyle asset.’ I’m bothered by the arbitrariness and the thoughtlessness with which many things are produced and brought to the market. There are so many unnecessary things we produce, not only in the sector of consumer goods, but also in architecture, in advertising. We have too many unnecessary things everywhere. And I would even go as far as to describe this as inhumane. That is the situation today. But actually, it has always been a problem.”
Rams is correct. Any designer, engineer, inventor, or entrepreneur out there exhibiting a ‘throwaway’ mindset reminiscent of planned obsolescence who purposefully or knowingly DOESN’T create a product that is as long-lasting and/or as reusable as it could be is inhumane and should feel embarrassed, ashamed, and have their design cards (if there were such a thing) permanently revoked. I personally like when Rams indicates that the future of design is to take care of “not only our personal environment but also our cities and our resources.” This, in my mind, means that designers have a unique opportunity to ask helpful questions along the way regarding the values and assumptions of empire that inevitably get tangled in our identities. For instance, next time a client comes along with an idea like “JerkyNails,” an ultra-realistic finger that features a delicious fingernail made entirely from beef jerky, we can ask in our hearts questions like: ‘Does this item I’m being asked to design honestly contribute enough to human flourishing, quality of life, and social welfare? Will the materials needed to make this product be long lasting and be sourced from the Earth in a reciprocal, sustainable way as free as possible from human or non-human exploitation?” More times than not I bet the answers to questions like these will be ‘no.’*
*Full disclosure that in the highly unlikely event where I’m asked to design a Bang Brows™ (pictured above) knock-off prototype called BangBraids™, I might have to consider taking the job.
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