Thoreauvian Punkonomics

 While many see Henry Thoreau as primarily or even exclusively as a nature writer, it's no surprise that the opening section of his opus Walden, or Life in the Woods begins with a section titled "Economy." Having graduated from Harvard in the economically turbulent year of 1837 (recall the "Panic of 1837" from your high school history class), Thoreau was significantly impacted by and focused on the economic and working conditions unfolding in America during the early part of the nineteenth century. This was a tumultuous era grounded in growing industrialism and the rise of the commercial economy.

And Thoreau had his questions, his skepticism, his criticism. 

As scholar Brian Walker noted in a piece on Thoreau's Alternative Economics, "Thoreau's central theme is that working conditions in a market economy can easily undermine liberty and erode autonomy." Thoreau was writing not too long after Adam Smith had begun to weave modern economic views with his treatise on Capitalism, Wealth of Nations. And it can be argued that Thoreau's work in Walden was a direct response to and even political satire of Smith. Thoreau was quickly realizing the insidious power of money and capital to compromise even to warp individual lives and choices. 

Similar views can be found in the rise of punk rock and punk culture in and around the year 1977, with comparable economic turmoil in both the United States and Great Britain. The similarities between 1837 and 1977, and the response of artists and writers to those challenging conditions, is a unique connection between the views of Henry Thoreau and the themes of punk. The nonconformist do-it-yourself attitudes of Thoreau and punk are intriguing and an interesting way to view both the man and the movement.

Because the market economy treats people inhumanely as simple cogs in a machine, and writers like Smith promote personal well being and individual value through material wealth and acquisition, an important key to understanding Thoreau, and specifically the section on Economy is as a critique of the rise of consumer culture, noting and criticizing the shift to a commercial and industrial economy that exploited man and forced an individual to view himself primarily, if not exclusively, through his economic value.