Violations of consumer expectations can spark democratic revolution

Evidence

The American Revolution is the outstanding example of how the reciprocities of consumption contributed to the rise of democracy. Historian T. H. Breen argues in his pathbreaking study The Marketplace of Revolution that it was the violation of these reciprocities that set the Revolution into motion, uniting disparate provincial strangers into a radical new patriotic force. Breen explains that American colonists had come to depend upon the “empire of goods” imported from England and that this dependency instilled the sense of a reciprocal social contract: “For ordinary people, the palpable experience of participating in an expanding Anglo-American consumer market” intensified their sense of a “genuine partnership” with England. Eventually, the British Parliament famously misjudged the rights and obligations of this partnership, imposing a series of taxes that turned imported goods such as cloth and tea into “symbols of imperial oppression.” Breen describes the originality of a political movement born in the shared experience of consumption, the outrage at the violation of essential producer-consumer interdependencies, and the determination to make “goods speak to power.” … The translation of consumer expectations into democratic revolution occurred in three waves, beginning in 1765, when the Stamp Act triggered popular protests, riots, and organized resistance finally expressed in the “nonimportation movement” (today we would call it a consumer boycott). As Breen tells it, the details of the Stamp Act were less important than the colonists’ realization that England did not perceive them as political or economic equals bound in mutually beneficial reciprocities: “By compromising the Americans’ ability to purchase the goods they desired, Parliament had revealed an intention to treat the colonists like second-class subjects,” levying a heavy price “on the pursuit of material happiness.” The Stamp Act was experienced as a violation of the colonists’ rights not only as subjects of the empire but also as consumers of the empire: it was the first translation of consumers’ economic power into political power, a “radically new form of politics” in which the most ordinary members of colonial society experienced “an exhilarating surge of empowerment.” … When the Townshend Acts were passed just two years later, in 1767, this time imposing taxes on a range of imported goods, a new wave of outrage mobilized people in every colony. Detailed nonimportation agreements turned consumer sacrifice into the front line of political resistance. The shared experience of violated expectations cut across regional, religious, and cultural differences, providing a new basis for social solidarity. … The 1773 Tea Act plunged the colonies into a new phase of resistance that shifted the political focus from nonimportation, which depended upon merchants holding the line, to nonconsumption, which demanded the participation of all individuals in the unique solidarity of their shared status as “customers.” It was in this context that Samuel Adams proclaimed that the cause of liberty “depended on the ability of the American people to free themselves from ‘the Baubles of Britain.’” — Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, 1595

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to Zuboff’s central thesis that surveillance capitalism violates its own reciprocities with users; the colonial consumer revolt is a historical template for potential resistance. — connects to: Consumer rebellion staged as shopping defuses actual political mobilization — Philip Mirowski, Never Let a Serious Crisis Go to Waste, 394; Cash-voting via buycotting can mobilize consumers where the state fails. — Philip Mirowski, Never Let a Serious Crisis Go to Waste, 413; Consumer society bred depoliticization even as welfare states strengthened democracy — Jürgen Habermas, A New Structural Transformation of the…, 27 (+1 more)
• QUESTION: Worth chasing: does Zuboff intend this colonial consumer-revolt template as a direct model for challenging surveillance capitalism? The parallel seems deliberate given the chapter’s placement.

Broader Connections

• Consumer society bred depoliticization even as welfare states strengthened democracy #complicates (0.85) — Jürgen Habermas, A New Structural Transformation of the…, 27