Thoreau: the Economist

While Henry Thoreau is often thought of as an environmentalist and a nature writer, based primarily on the reading public's knowledge his work Walden, or Life in the Woods, fewer people see Thoreau through his philosophy on work and economics. In fact, few people think of Thoreau as an economics writer even though the introductory section to his opus, Walden, is titled "Economy." Truly, Thoreau wrote at length on the natural world and man's relationship to his environment, but his retreat to Walden Pond was specifically designed and chosen for him to have time, space, and a viewpoint from which to critique a dynamic and changing economic situation in Concord and America at large. 

In the study Henry at Work (Kaag and Van Belle), Thoreau is portrayed as one who above all else "realized the power of money to warp our lives." Having graduated from Harvard in 1837 during the most serious economic crisis the young nation had yet faced, Thoreau both witnessed the rise of the consumer commercial economy in which surplus was a new concept, at the same time he experienced the dire fiscal situation facing many young graduates. In fact, as Robert Sullivan points out in The Thoreau You Don't Know, young Henry "went to the pond to make a point about work." Thoreau was actually an incredibly hard worker and industrious young man whose talents ranged from innovator of a new superior pencil lead to trusted surveyor of the Concord landscape.

And, "If you think Thoreau as anti-work, that is because Thoreau questioned "why we work" (Kaag and Van Belle). In embracing the natural world and being in tune with, rather than at odds with, his environment, Thoreau even challenged the Biblical notion of the work week and the Sabbath, opining that man should work one day a week and rest the other six. Imagine the views of church leaders and inheritors of the Puritan ethic with that one. Yet, Thoreau was no "do-little," as he is often mistaken to be and criticized for.  While Thoreau explains that his "purpose in going to Walden was not to live cheaply nor to live dearly, but to transact some private business the fewest obstacles," he was working to explore and develop an economic critique.

And despite those stated intentions of transacting private business, "an important part of of Thoreau's experiment turned out to involve basic economic questions: What is the best way to earn a living? How much time should be spent at it?" (Thoreau's Living Ethics, Cafaro). Few people ask these questions, though Henry believed people should first and foremost draw their own conclusions, rather than submit to standards established by institutions. For he believed the point of economics is not how much wealth an individual produces, but what sort of people that work and wealth makes us.

An interesting connection to punk culture, especially in the second wave California bands like Black Flag and Minutemen, is the serious work ethic exhibited by these musicians to simply work on their terms. Because the punk economy was small, most bands lived quite sparsely, often "hand-to-mouth," and that fiscal reality was fundamental to the band Minutemen's philosophy and ethic of "jamming econo," which basically meant doing things "as cheaply and efficiently as possible" (White Boys, White Noise, Bannister).