The Production of Consumer Society

Front matter

Economic. 7 Principles of Distinction

Ernst Mohr The Production of Consumer Society

Edition transcript | Volume 9

Part 1: Culture Of Dissimilarity

OVCIVIEW sicsctitediesdodeesauduscdesadueedevededudedede sane sudeaueanusepons ia 61 Segmented Otder rerio o o EEEE EEEE EEEE EEEE EEES 75 Comparability eree ache eae a a E O er a E 77 Ornamente yie mo E N 79 Incomparability...;%.00200s alte welled. 84 Distant and Near Vision and Style asir ihk cece cece PE KENE KEFE KEKE TEKER E 94

FUZZIES Sonsan yE EE Sones useee eee O 105 Assigning Objects: tO: Styles onn 107 Similarity. of OPETE oI RA RRA RARER ARE ade dade 109 Clustering ini Nature E E AE AEE veeecuessnegeety 112 Clustering: in CU E viv, a NNN RNANA 114 Style Leadership and Innovation cser iroio rrer Err Err Err Er EErEE TE 116 Stylistic Visose ae Mov, boy Belk ens bean ben dee cIecedeeelecedeeclecedeeeloceees 120 Preferences and the Nucleus of the Social Space... 123 Identificationiand Identity: 25.024 vcs sctecdiesceasSeaeebetatessuasebesteeteteseeates 124

Proximity Clarified aiias ENAN 135 Distance Char ede eea ee ee eoe e a eatea eeaeee saene oeut cele se ras 142 Culture as Dynamic Institution 2.0.0.0... n n EEEE 166 Lingu@ francdas* Restriction: AE SAA NN EA ANAA NEAN NAAA 166 The Cultural LradesOft vs.davdodagieetieddysdoeiceee di saciesdiai cc ee Han divadduadoniaes 168 Gulttiral (Injeffictenicy e e EEE EEEE EE AEE EEEa Ta 169

Chapter 6 Cultural Selection

Feature Enia EAO o) i PERAE AEEA EAE EEEE EEEE EIEEE EEEE SINGLETON SAGICU,, Foy nheS eth th ots E ay al ie a at eat ai 179 Phylomania A 180 Quality: Inflation A E 181 Up=to=Date:FOrevers ss s.tsvseeusissssesessseos3 sesh sos sade EEREN NA 184 MoreandiMore Savants torreon o e tents tesa east. 185 Phasing- Ontofthe Unf en epn n a EEEE EEEE EER 186 Polytomisation AAAA AEAEE 187 Nucleation ss zits dc: esaa aa aa a a a a a a aas 189 Charisma of Style Leadership ercstosesrinon o T 190 Opening of the Closed Society

Variegation in Nature and Culture sisicciiiisiiiiisiiisiiiiiiiiaiiiiiiia 205

SEVIEG LOUPINGS nies ce esses ANNEN es vedere testes NTN 222 Special Groüp nEs roesit eao eaaa oaoa a seca ete eae o ee Ns 227 Stylistic Encounters: KOREN NE NE E NE NEA NE A NE AEE AE N 231 Spitalinto:the Extremen manea aa E E E tac asda 236 The Innovation Cycle scvavscodsovapavsvapapavasaesvasastessaeestecsasestesmepesaeamesents 237 COO] a ciueweseaeievevevencues sued eoesDetenes ves seedsbeset seskystesbiiteibasiiisieseieneaa ae 238 Aesthetic Liking and Interesten a a A 244 Honeckers Leni eoe reinii i e lous luvs long deus iii 247 Happy nS ees E nivale ee ess 250 Industrial Revolution sirasinonio n eon nne o een n O o E een 254 Singularity Mass:Production a aa RRRA RE AR AR TA 256 Length Estensi O EEEREN sues ER E EPRE NER 259 Simplification Of Thota E ssw: an ENEE NNN ENNO 260 IRET aI E ERE EET EE E E E E ET 263 The Ecological Footprint ...1. cccvsvsvcvevevsvevevavevevdvevevevdvevevevevevevevevevevees 267 Brand:(Equity).and Rcology erer erriren rrera hhc hahahaha eta ERS 271 Signalling and Sign Transformation ....s.ssessssssseeseeeeeeeererererereeererereeee 275

Creative versus Conservative Signalling 1.0.0.0... eee eeeeee 279

Stylistic Engagement aeiee EE E EE TEER 280

Preface

Economics leads us to believe that the consumption of large quantities benefits us — more of everything is the source of our happiness. That’s why we strive for ever more of the same, and more ofall that’s new. And that’s why we are expected to be buying like mad for ever greater satisfaction — in absolute or relative terms. No branch of economics is more mistaken than consumer theory. At its core, it remains a theory of the relationship between things and people (via the relationship between quantities and prices), and not one between people.

Of course, we also consume quantities: however many calories of food, square metres of our homes - just as people in hunter-gatherer economies did, whose consumption remains the blueprint for economics to this day. But today we are deriving less and less utility from quantities consumed per se. Instead, and increasingly so, the consumption of social differences — of social distance and social proximity — generates utility for us. We strive for more of the same, only as far as it helps create that social distance or proximity — as today we seldom succeed at this by merely striving for this goal. Much more conducive to utility is the consumption of quality: “Yes to this, no to that!”. This is the point of departure in this book.

We consume in ways that certain people are not consuming, and consume roughly the same as others. In this way we produce social distance and proximity, distance from one and proximity to the other. This is the source of our happiness. We use consumer goods for our benefit — here I agree with economic orthodoxy. But we don’t succeed by piling up mountains of them, which we then devour and otherwise exploit, but rather by opening up divides between people and thereby manifesting distance, as well as building bridges to other people and thereby expressing proximity to them. This production view of social distance and proximity opens up a consumer theory, the core of which is not the relationship between things and people, but between people and people, a view that is presented here.

But how exactly do we produce social distance and proximity as we consume? Non-trivial answers beyond “Yes to this, no to that!” are not evident. The economic orthodoxy remains silent here, except perhaps for the assertion that “Yes to this, no to that!” depends on which goods convey information a consumer wants other consumers to know. But what the desired information should be remains obscure or a communicative primitive (like ‘being rich’, understood as communicable simply by high consumer spending). Sociology is hardly doing any better. There, “Yes to this, no to that!” is understood as being the consequence of interpersonal differences in financial and non-financial (human and social) capital stocks. Although these are regarded as the source of social distance and proximity, sociology has little more to offer than a tautology as to how the latter are created: social distance and proximity are created by (the production of) social distance and proximity. Psychology, on the other hand, lacks the systematic consideration of the material, and material culture research lacks the broader view. And semiotics concerns itself with the relationship between symbols, but it remains all the more silent on the relationship between distance and proximity, which are themselves also symbols. And as a result, it also remains silent on the relationship between people, who with their “Yes to this, no to that!”, move closer to some and further away from others. The goal of the following is to close these gaps a bit.

It will be shown how social distance and proximity are communicated by consumption and produced by communication. The approach taken can be regarded as a (material) cultural-economic one. The world of things (augmented by matching behaviours) provides the ‘material’ for opening up interpersonal divides on the one hand and building bridges on the other. Culture provides the classification system that turns “Yes to this, no to that!” into a communicative activity, and the economy opens up the sphere of activity for consumers, confronting them with the consequences of their actions. Consumption, understood as the consumption of social distance and proximity rather than quantities of goods, closes the production-consumption circuit. But not, as in economic orthodoxy, in a self-referential economic system, but rather via culture. Culture is not an addendum to the economic circuit, but central to it.

Part 1: Culture of Dissimilarity

Chapter 1 Material “We speak through our clothes.”

Umberto Eco'

Singletons: Pina

Piña is a textile that represents the Philippines in a singular way.” In a complicated, time-consuming process, fibres are extracted from pineapple leaves and woven into an airy, semi-transparent, very expensive whitish fabric. Piña was worn in the 19th century by the Philippine Ilustrado class. Ilustrados — the enlightened ones — were Spanish mestizos born in the Philippines, who had received their higher education in Europe and enhanced their wealth with overseas trade. The wearing of pifia was synonymous with the command of the Spanish language, wealth, refined European manners and urbanity. Even before the indigenous population (Indios) did so, and in spite of their close economic and cultural ties to Spain, the Ilustrados developed the idea of an independent (national) identity separate from Spanish colonial rule. Piña was the textile of choice of the wealthy male Filipino for his barong tagalog, the wide, long-sleeved, embroidered shirt worn over his trousers.

Later, in the first half of the 20th century, having shifted from Spanish to American colonial influence, the country’s elite displayed the American tastes of the time. The western suit with shirt and tie became the clothing of a man of the world and pifia became passé, now a sign of the Spanish-European past. The national Filipino identity was simultaneously migrating into lower social strata, and in 1953, after the country had gained its independence, the man of the

1 Quoted from Kidder 2005, p. 345.

masses, Ramon Magsaysay, won the presidential election against his Americaleaning predecessor, Manuel Quezon. Piña then rose through a symbolic act of the newly-elected president to a symbol of the new nation: for his inauguration Magsaysay preferred a barong tagalog in sinfully expensive pifia over a western suit. Piña thus became a symbol of national identity, from having been the symbol of the Spanish-European past, and having been still earlier a symbol of a cultivated way of life.’

Its manufacturing technique combined with the history of its use made piña an incomparable fabric. It belongs within the world of objects, the superset of all objects, to the class of singular pieces separated from all other objects — piña is a singleton, an object ina set of its own, without comparable relatives.‘ In the following, a singleton is represented by the symbol o.**

Piña impressively demonstrates the non-verbal communicative power of objects. A fibre obtained from the pineapple plant and woven into a textile conveys distance and proximity over a long period of time; distance between the Ilustrados and the Indios as well as in relation to the colonial rulers, and proximity to one

3 Today piña belongs to the Filipiniana and is the romanticised symbol of a refined urban Filipino past.

4 Proceeding from objects usually with a plurality of characteristics (material, colour, cut, etc.), a singleton can be defined as an object identical to its sole characteristic (for example, the textile piña). Thus, a singleton object is a mathematical unit set, a set with exactly one member, its characteristic, because the set of its characteristics is by definition (tautologically) a unit set. Defined as a singleton, all garments made from piña are therefore identical and the set of all objects with this characteristic is a unit set. Another example: kitsch is one of several characteristics of certain paintings and therefore there exist different kitschy paintings, hence the set of kitschy paintings contains more than one member. However, as a painterly category ‘kitsch’, all kitschy pictures are identical and the set of objects with this property shrinks to a unit set. It is already clear from these examples that the mathematical properties of sets of objects are not exogenous, giving reliable orientation to cultural and social scientific analysis. Rather, they are culturally-made variables. We will encounter this complication throughout the book. The derivation of properties from sets of objects is the main analytical task in the following. The use of mathematical language is unproblematic as long as it is understood as the means of an author —and the author is culture.

5 Inthe following footnotes marked with *, generic terms and concepts used in the main text are translated into the language of set theory. If not explicitly defined, the mathematical notation follows that of Basili and Vannucci (2013), as this source is also used for the further specification of the terms ‘distance’ and ‘proximity’. The reader disinterested in the later formal modelling may simply skip the *footnotes.

another. Piña is exemplary of two important properties of the entire world of objects. Firstly, an object not only creates distance or proximity, but both simultaneously — it acts as a separator and a cement in tandem. One can hardly be separated from the other, almost as if distance creates proximity and proximity creates distance. Secondly, with piña, distance and proximity were not created within a group or in between groups, but distance was created towards other groups, and at the same time proximity was created within a group. The world of objects thus renders the social space visible. Objects are socially distinguishing features vis-à-vis the outside world, and at the same time means for identification and the characteristics of identity within a group.

0/+Consumption

Piña is quintessential for the understanding of consumption. Although the fabric itself is a typical consumer good, it does not offer utility by way of positive quantities consumed. Ceteris paribus — the more, the better, but through an ordered “Yes to this, no to that!” of at least two consumers, who answer “Yes to what, no to what?” each in a different way.

For understanding this claim, it is helpful to distinguish the consumption goods basket from the goods type basket. In the orthodoxy‘, the utility-generating consumption goods basket contains positive quantities of each type of goods that the consumer consumes. Types not consumed are not contained in it — in line with the shrewd motto, ‘You can’t do something with nothing’. In the orthodoxy, this reduction of the sources of utility to positive quantities of goods is also motivated by the fact that zero quantities are irrelevant for compliance with the consumer's budget restriction. The consumed quantity zero of a type of good, for example, of piña by the Spanish colonial masters or later the ‘Americanists’, is budget-neutral, no matter how expensive the good may be - just as the consumption of positive quantities of goods whose market price is zero is budget neutral. Solely focused on the analysis of scarcity, the orthodoxy treats goods with a positive price that the consumer does not consume in the same way as it treats goods consumed in positive quantities that cost nothing — both are ignored or dismissed as economically irrelevant.

This is a grave omission. For it obscures the view of another source of consumer utility: the utility that consumer A, for example, the Philippine ‘Americanist’, obtains precisely by not consuming positive quantities, i.e. shunning that

6 Orthodoxy in the following refers to neoclassical consumer economics.

good (pifia), which consumer B, in the example of the Philippine nationalist, is consuming in positive quantities, i.e. is surrounding himself with it, and shunning instead a different good (the Western suit). Avoiding different types of goods in each case brings about utility for both consumers because it establishes their identities.

Therefore, a more general definition of economic behaviour than that commonly used in orthodoxy is called for. There, economic activity requires an input of resources. Consequently, that which does not cost any (finite) resources, however defined, is not an economically relevant action. Utility is thus the sole derivative of the availability of scarce resources (nature, money, time, knowledge, network). Zero-quantity consumption, because it’s budget neutral, remains economically indeterminate — and implicitly economically irrelevant — however rational it may be.

Here, ‘rational’ is to be understood in Popper’s sense (being consensual across the social sciences) as behaviour appropriate in a concrete situation. In the orthodoxy, zero-quantity consumption is rationalised as the case whereby the first unit of the good that the consumer actually consumes in zero quantity, would provide a lower marginal utility than the last unit of each good that they consume in positive quantities. The resulting conclusion that zero-quantity consumption must then provide a still smaller utility is implicit in the orthodoxy. But it is a false conclusion. For in the identity-forming context, discontinuities at the zeropoint of consumption must be taken into account. The first piña barong tagalog consumed might give the Philippine ‘Americanist’ a lower marginal utility than the last unit of every good he consumes in positive quantities. Nonetheless, his zero-quantity consumption gives him greater utility than the first unit consumed - and perhaps even greater utility than the first unit of a good he actually consumes in positive quantity. The ‘Americanist’s’ specific rationale is thus completely different from that of the orthodox model: the Philippine ‘Americanist’ doesn’t consume pifia because the first unit gives him (too) little marginal utility. But instead, because the transition from one unit of pifia to zero-unit consumption gives him a large utility increase. Nothing would make him consume pifa if it’s consumed by the nationalist. This zero-consumption utility, however, would disappear if pifia were not worn by the Filipino nationalist, then it would’ve lost its identity-generating capacity for both consumers.

The crosswise asymmetric zero and positive-quantity consumption of two consumers and two goods is therefore highly relevant for happiness or utility. It is an economically relevant activity, if economic relevance is viewed in terms of seeking happiness or utility, rather than from scarce resources. To this end, economic activity must be understood in more general terms as whatever contributes to happiness or utility, regardless of whether it costs scarce resources or not. To leave it open until the question is settled whether it is the one or the other, I will use the terms happiness/utility.

Consumption here is therefore defined as the way in which humans use the world of objects — the culturally laden world of things that partly can and partly cannot be bought — including related consumer behaviours. Then the consumer can also consume an object, if firstly, they don’t consume any of its specimens, and secondly, ifthe crossing from the first unit consumed to zero-quantity consumption yields a discreet positive utility increase. Consumption that meets these two conditions is referred to as zero-quantity consumption.’ In the following, it is assumed that this increase in utility is due to the existence of other consumers who consume the object in positive quantities, and therefore zero-quantity consumption makes a difference to these consumers.

Positive-quantity consumption of an object is defined as consumption of at least one unit. Note that positive-quantity consumption makes no distinction between different positive quantities of specimens of an object. The consumption of ten pifia-tailored barong tagalog is the same as the consumption of one. Zero-quantity consumption by a consumer of an object presupposes the existence of a positive-quantity consumer of that same object. For at least two consumers and for at least one object, consumption is asymmetrical: one avoids the object — piña no! — and the other exhibits it — piña yes! I refer to this relationship between consumers as zero/positive-quantity consumption, in short 0/+consumption.

Identity, Quality, Motivation

In the following, social identity is understood as being mediated by 0/+consumption: as a consequence of ‘one avoids an object and the other surrounds himself with it’. In extreme cases, a single object can convey the different identities of two consumers as a minimum requirement. Umberto Eco’s “We speak through our clothes” (which we wear) can therefore be extended to include “...and those we do not wear”. The ‘piña yes!’ of the nationalist and the ‘piña no!’ of the ‘Americanist’ lead to different identities only when they are jointly at work.

In the real world we find multiple o/+consumption: two consumers with different identities surround themselves asymmetrically with a larger number of

7 Note that the second condition of this definition means that not any decision not to consume a unit of an object is necessarily an act of consumption. In the case of objects for which it is not fulfilled, the orthodox “You can’t do something with nothing’ continues to apply.

objects, and avoid a larger number of other objects — identity, so to speak, as the result of whole communication salvos from the world of objects. I will use the term consumer style for that kind of o/+consumption.

In this interpretation, social identity is exclusively conveyed by the world of objects. Without the use of the object world — the position taken here — there is no identity, and putting it simply, nothing more than the world of objects is needed for creating identity. So, the presumption is that consumers’ styles are a necessary and sufficient means for creating their identity.

Here the difference between identity and identification is already evident. Identification is a psychological process of assigning oneself to other persons (self-categorisation) with the desire of belonging and for inclusion. Identity, on the other hand, is the result of successful inclusion in a group and thus something social, which in turn presupposes that there must be at least one alternative. Although the Filipino can identify with the entire population of the Philippines, they can only be a Filipino nationalist if there is at least one alternative, in this case the Filipino ‘Americanist’, and vice versa. This means that piña can only convey identity to the Filipino nationalist if it also conveys the different identity of the Filipino ‘Americanist’. o/+consumption thus becomes the central social nexus.

The view conveyed here moves the consumption of quantities of objects into the background and the consumption of types into the foreground. The consumer goods basket full of specimens is replaced by the goods type basket, which contains no more than one specimen of the goods types consumed in positive quantities, regardless of the number of units consumed. The consumer goods type baskets therefore differ in quality — regardless of how many units of a differentiating product type are actually consumed. That is why I refer to this view as the Quality Theory of Consumption (QTC). With regard to utility generated by an object, the only important question in QTC is the binary one: zero or positive-quantity consumption — yes or no?**

Consumption theory thus undergoes a transformation from a theory of the relationship between thing and human (quantity theory of consumption of the orthodoxy), to a theory of the relationship between human and human (QTC). In

8* Define x; as aspecimen of object type i that can be used for the production of social distance and proximity. LetX := {x,,..., Xn} be the finite population of one specimen for each existing object type in the world of objects. LetA € X andB € X be the goods type baskets of two consumers a and b. The set difference of A and B, A\B:= {x | (x € A)A(x € B)},andofBandA,B\ A:=

{x | (x E€ B) A(x ¢ A)}are the utility generating object types. Utility generating for both consumers is the symmetrical difference (A \ B) U (B \ A).

the orthodoxy’s quantity theory, the central relationship is established via quantities and prices, in QTC via the quality of objects. In other words, in QTC consumer utility is created by the difference between consumers. These differences are comprised of visible distinguishing patterns in consumption, which is why utility arises only from collective consumption. The idea of consumption of social distance and proximity intuitively captures these relationships.

Which motives for consumption does this QTC assume? Individual consumption exclusively serves social manipulation with the simultaneously pursued goals:

i. Proximity: the sublimation of one’s own individuality within the social in-group (elective affinity), whose membership the individual attains.

ii. Distance: the sublimation of the differences between one’s in- group and (all) out-groups.

The collectivist (Eastern) society is not modelled this way, but rather the individualistic (Western) society. The individual does not strive to fuse with their social in-group (or its prototype), does not strive to disappear in it, but to curate and display their individuality therein. But they’re not so individualistic as to have no need whatsoever of belonging to a group, they seek to belong to an in-group, and also to demarcate themself with this group from the rest of society. The individual thus attains a dual identity, an individual identity arising from differences visa-vis all other members of their in-group, and a collective identity arising from differences between this in-group and the out-groups.

Chains: Purple, Titian, Uniform

The world of objects, by which social difference is created, is made up not only of singletons. One of the distinguishing features are the shades of colours consumers wear. For example, the colour purple is a blend of the primary colours blue and red, different blending ratios result in different shades. Every shade can be assigned to a certain proportion of the colour red (alternatively to the colour blue), and be compared using this mapping. Any shade of purple has either a larger or smaller proportion of red than any other shade. A finite number of purple shades can therefore be thought of as arranged in a chain with the two extremes ‘almost red’ and ‘almost blue’.

In the world of objects many chains exist of at least ordinally comparable objects. They can be compared by criteria such as ‘more or less ornamental’, ‘more or less colourful’, ‘authentic’, ‘modern’, ‘French’, ‘perfect’, ‘complete’, etc. One question in need of further clarification is how to treat elements of chains as opposed to singletons regarding the creation of social distance and proximity. By intuition, differently! If one consumer wears red and the other blue (which can be thought of as two singletons among colours), then this makes for a different distance between the two than if they wear shades of purple in order to convey the common affiliation to a group. But also by way of their different shades, convey their belonging to different hierarchical levels in it. For a deeper understanding of the production of social distance and proximity by way of the world of objects, it is therefore helpful to distinguish chains from singletons.’ Chains are represented in the following by the symbol |."°*

In art history chains can be traced in painting styles, for example of Titian. As an exponent of High Renaissance painting, Titian’s complete oeuvre does not show a ‘finished’ style of this epoch, but a style that evolved." Young Titian was called to Padua to paint frescoes for the Scuola del Santo. Dedicated to the miracles of Saint Anthony (Miracle of the Newborn Infant, Miracle of the Jealous Husband, and Miracle of the Irascible Son), the frescoes are the first works attributable to him. Their subjects resemble earlier frescoes painted by Paduan painters for the Scuola. This resemblance, however, and the fact that all these frescoes were created for the same principal, are precisely where Titian’s stylistic autonomy manifests itself. His style shows fewer human figures, but instead more monumental ones. They are arranged in the foreground, the depicted landscape merely forms the background. The eye’s focus is thus led towards the foreground, where the interactions of the figures show narrative clarity, classical drama and previously unknown dynamics. This way, the style is radically different from the typical 15th century painterly narrative style, where figures are depicted as minor additions in a decorative architectural and scenic splendour. It is likely, though, that Titian’s break with the painterly style typical of the time, and his independent tendency towards the classical were inspired by sculptures in the Basilica of

9 The reservation made in footnote 4 regarding the mathematical property of singletons applies mutatis mutandis also to chains: Whether a subset of objects is a chain is determined by culture. Elements of a subset of, for example, purple shades can be equated with their common characteristic ‘purple’, which makes the chain a unit set and their elements identical specimens of the singleton purple.

10* Achain of X isasetC E X, so each pair of elements (x,y) € C X C isa total, transitive and antisymmetric binary relation on C.

Saint Anthony of Padua. Many of his later works sublimate the style of his Paduan frescoes.

Titian’s oeuvre is an example of a chain in art brought to light by art history (culture). The radical break with the traditional painterly narrative style has created a new subset of artworks that possess the uniqueness of a singleton as a whole (Titian’s entire oeuvre), but can also be treated as non-identical objects of the object type ‘by Titian’. Chains of artworks have extremes, as ‘almost red’ and ‘almost blue’ are the extremes for the purple shades. The extreme that marks the beginning of Titian’s style lies in sculpture, not painting, another extreme for instance in his Bacchanal of 1518/19,” a work that consummately displays his style.

As we consume art in our collections, as we visit museums, indulging in some and shunning other forms of art, we show our individual taste in it. Being part of the world of objects, art generates utility, helping create social distance and proximity. But this also applies to objects of crafts, the oriental carpet as well as the nativity scene. Art, as used for the production of social distance and proximity, is not a class of objects of its own, though its potential to achieve this in a subtle way may be greater than that of nativity scenes, for example.

At first glance, the soldier’s uniform appears as the stark opposite of art. In art, subtle distinguishing features make the difference; in uniforms, uniformity reigns. But to think of them in the o/+consumption model as if pars pro toto applies would still be wrong. The uniform separates the military from civilians, but it is also a distinguishing feature within the military. The uniform too has characteristics of the chain.

The emergence of the Danish military uniform in the 18th century is a case in point.” Uniforms brought about both social distance and proximity in a complicated way. In its basic uniformity, the garb had to be adjusted to the military hierarchy, and the rules for its use had to be also compatible with the lifestyle of the military ranks. In the 18th century, Denmark was a military state with a bigger army than Prussia in terms of population. As in Prussia, the Danish officer corps was recruited exclusively from the aristocracy. The earlier military organisation of the mercenary army established and demanded loyalty only towards the regiment and its colonel, a war entrepreneur, whose loyalty to his clients depended variably on the amount and regularity of payments received. The nascent idea of the territorial state, and the total subordination of everyone under the kingship,