Producerism: The Process
This article first appeared in the Minden Times and Haliburton Echo in October 2025.
“The tradition of producerism seeks civic virtue through the habit of useful daily work that contributes to community growth.” So says Joe Mancini in Transition to Common Work: Building Community at The Working Centre, published in 2015.
That’s 100 years after Ralph Chaplin wrote Solidarity Forever, in which he says “They have taken untold millions that they never toiled to earn/But without our mind and muscle not a single wheel could turn.”
And that’s 100 years after Byron Shelley, following the massacre of striking workers, wrote ‘Shake your chains to earth like dew…Ye are many, they are few.”
Labour unrest is among us again. For good reason: the value of labour has become detached from the value of labourers.
Producerism is a process for reversing that trend. A society – our society -- that uses consumerism to locate people in the pecking order – those who have much are more valued than those who have little – is also a society that has plundered the planet to the brink of destruction (we hope the brink; we hope we’ve not tipped over the edge). It’s unsustainable, to use the word that is a whip driving business to bigger bigger bigger which presumably is then, hmm, too big to fail? Because failure of behemoths will bring the world as we know it to an end.
Yes. We had a whiff of that when in July 2022 the telecommunication system of Rogers failed and left twelve million people off line for fifteen hours, causing mayhem and consternation. We experienced it locally during the 2025 ice storm when communication systems were down for days.
And therefore we quail and fail to cut the behemoths down to size, and continue to tremble in fear at our vulnerability. Whether their power is economic or political (is there a difference?) we allow these bullies to trample the earth like a raging TRex. Why? Because it’s not our job? Because they’re too big and scary? Because they know everything about us? Maybe because we don’t see an alternative.
Shake your chains! We are many, they are few! If we rename and reclaim our labour, and use it for the common good, we will slay the dragon. We will render the behemoths irrelevant. If we redirect our energy to the part of the world that we can own and take care of, we won’t need the behemoths to thrive. Without our input, both as producers and consumers, they will shrivel.
Producerism is not the antithesis of consumerism. In fact, it’s the other end of the dialectical stick. That is, the two co-exist on the same plane, they are two sides of the same coin, they give meaning and purpose to each other. The magic is in finding the balance between the two ends, a moving target, as it should be.
If we integrate producing and consuming in a world small enough to be comprehensible, we gain a sense of control, along with a sense of humility as we bump into that which we cannot control. Managing the tension between acting and being acted upon, certainty and uncertainty, will restore balance in our lives and on our planet. Tucking into our smaller world is also probably our wisest plan for surviving the economic and political upheaval that is upon us.
This change requires that we rename and reclaim our labour as not just that which is paid. We flirted with this when the pandemic ruptured the work world and we had to redefine and reconsider work-life balance. We rediscovered work-life integration by folding laundry while taking a business call, and walking down the hall was the commute to work.
The definitive change will require embracing producerism, the integration of work with the people who produce and consume that work, who collectively own the process as well as the product. We will learn (relearn: children are born knowing it) that work is life. Work is purpose. Work is joy. Work is competence. Work is pride. Work is loving and caring and grieving and celebrating – all the emotional complexity and wonder of becoming/being a human being.
Joe Mancini and his wife Stephanie, who for five decades have been labouring in Kitchener to create a network of organizations called The Working Centre that valourizes producerism, the coming together of what is made, who makes it, and how it is used in the community to advance the common good, are closing speakers at the upcoming HalCo Housing Summit – Oct 16, Minden Hills Rec Centre. You’re invited.
