Blog on Capitalism

Exploring the Nature of Capitalism

A revised version of the book The History and Nature of Capitalism, dated 23rd March 2011 has now been posted here and can be accessed below.

This revision includes an addendum examining the nature of exchange and reciprocity and the importance of these in understanding the nature of capitalism.

If there is a single defining feature of Western capitalism, it might well be the peculiar definition of exchange which lies at its core. If we can get that definition of exchange into perspective, it will help us to get capitalism into comparative perspective.

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It is time to draw the threads together and present the articles in this blog series on capitalism as an integrated whole. The result is a book entitled The History and Nature of Capitalism which includes rewritten versions of 9 of the Capitalism blog entries, linked through a wide range of clickable footnotes (obviously this is all designed as an ebook (a hard copy version would make for a very unwieldy book)).

I have reworked each of the articles to take into account ideas developed in later entries and, also, to address issues which have emerged in the course of this rewriting. I reserve the right, as I return to the text from time to time, to alter anything I decide needs further reworking.

I think this is one of the real virtues of the ebook format – nothing needs to be set in stone (or paper) and so mistakes, careless language, loose thinking, and material which is being misunderstood or misinterpreted can be addressed over time. If major changes are made I’ll signal this by posting a new version showing the revision date.

The book, like the earlier blog entries, has been written using the Complete Home Library application’s HTML editor. This application is available for download (sorry, I have only written a Windows version of it).

A library of the blog entries is also available for download, for use in the application. To access it, select ‘Download demonstration libraries’ from the Help menu in the main Complete Home Library screen. From the HTML page which is accessed, select the library ‘Anthropology and the Western World (updated 8th October 2010)’ and download it to your computer desktop. Leave it on your desktop, the application will unpack it if it is already running or will unpack the downloaded file when you next run it.

The download versions of the book below, present the complete set of writings in a form which will allow you to follow footnoting to other sections of the book without having to be connected to the internet. If you move to other sections, and want to return to your place in the book, right-click and select the option ‘back’, this will return you to your previous location.

I have left the ‘Comments’ option for each of the chapters so that, should something occur to you while reading, or should you have suggestions for improving the content, you can provide feedback for each section. To comment on the whole book, please use the Comments option below. I assure you that I do take into account the ideas of others in developing mine.

Spring has arrived in my neck of the woods, the lawns are growing so fast you can almost see the grass getting longer, and there is much to do in the garden so I’ll concentrate on that for the next couple of months (and, yes, I will find time to take the boat out once in a while (life is hell!)). But, I will be back.

The next series will focus on the present impact of capitalism, both on people and on our environments. I look forward to sharing ideas with you then.

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Exploring the Nature of Capitalism

The posts to this blog category have been reorganised as a book entitled The History and Nature of Capitalism which includes rewritten versions of 9 of the Capitalism blog entries, linked through a wide range of clickable footnotes (obviously this is all designed as an ebook (a hard copy version would make for a very unwieldy book)).

The book can be accessed from here: The History and Nature of Capitalism: The Book

We, in Western communities, live in a commoditised world. In a manner never before seen in human society, Western peoples convert anything and everything into money-making commodities – objects which can be exploited for profit – and believe that it is ‘natural’ to do so. Vast financial and promotional industries have grown over the past three hundred years, driven by and dedicated to the commoditisation of the world.

The Western need to accumulate money inevitably results in more and more of the forms of activity, interaction and organisation which people perceive as important to themselves, being exploited for profit. The consequence is the commoditisation of society.

To understand the nature and consequences of this burgeoning commoditisation of everything around us, we need to ask why we feel such a deep need to accumulate material wealth; to make everything around us a source of material profit.

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Exploring the Nature of Capitalism
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The posts to this blog category have been reorganised as a book entitled The History and Nature of Capitalism which includes rewritten versions of 9 of the Capitalism blog entries, linked through a wide range of clickable footnotes (obviously this is all designed as an ebook (a hard copy version would make for a very unwieldy book)).

The book can be accessed from here: The History and Nature of Capitalism: The Book

Over the past nine months we have covered a range of topics in our exploration of the nature of capitalism. A topic which has been presumed in those discussions, but never directly addressed, is the nature of reciprocity and exchange.

Capitalism presumes market exchange as the normal form of exchange between human beings. This form of exchange is, however, only one in a wide range of possible focuses of exchange.

In this post, we will examine the nature of reciprocity and exchange and the ways in which the forms of relationship which exist between people determine the nature of the exchanges in which they engage.

In many communities around the world, market exchange is only acceptable between people who do not share a close relationship. Those involved in market exchange focus on the items they are attempting to obtain or sell. The other person in the exchange is only recognised as a seller or customer. Most people find it very difficult to engage in market exchange with people with whom they already share another kind of relationship.

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Exploring the Nature of Capitalism
Entries (RSS) ; Comments (RSS)

The posts to this blog category have been reorganised as a book entitled The History and Nature of Capitalism which includes rewritten versions of 9 of the Capitalism blog entries, linked through a wide range of clickable footnotes (obviously this is all designed as an ebook (a hard copy version would make for a very unwieldy book)).

The book can be accessed from here: The History and Nature of Capitalism: The Book

In 2001, 924 million people, or 31.6 per cent of the world’s urban population, lived in slums. The majority of them were in the developing regions, accounting for 43 per cent of the urban population… In many cities, there are more poor people outside slum areas than within them.
^{(UN Agency for Human Settlements, The Challenge of Slums: Global Report on Human Settlements 2003 p. xxv,xxvi)}

Is the sweat-shop the destination of human beings involved in deregulated, globalised capitalism, or is it a first step in a ‘take-off into self-sustained economic growth’?

Are we really headed for a world in which the number of  slum dwellers doubles in the next thirty years, with “unprecedented urban growth in the face of increasing poverty and social inequality”?

Unless something remarkable, and unlikely given present economic conditions, happens, the trends described in the UN-Habitat report will bring enormous problems in the next few decades:

The locus of poverty is moving from the countryside to cities, in a process now recognized as the “urbanization of poverty.” The absolute number of poor and undernourished in urban areas is increasing, as are the numbers of urban poor who suffer from malnutrition…

In some cities, slums are so pervasive that rather than designate residential areas for the poor, it is the rich who segregate themselves behind gated enclaves.
(2003 p. xxvi)

In this discussion we will examine the experiences of Third World nations as they became “unhinged” and attempted to “emerge into self-sustained growth” (to use Rostow’s (1961) colourful, optimistic phraseology); as they attempted to ‘develop’ into capitalist success stories over the past 60 years.

In the 1^st decade of the 21^st century, most Third World communities are transient. Most of them are in various stages of change. They are slowly, but inevitably, metamorphosing into communities which exhibit similarities with the pre-colonial communities from which they came.

Western peoples are faced with a difficult decision:

ignore the changes and continue to assert with Rostow and his many followers that Third World communities are still in the process of metamorphosing into capitalist nations — it’s just taking longer than we expected!
attempt to prevent the changes;
accept the changes and live with the consequences.

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Exploring the Nature of Capitalism
Entries (RSS) ; Comments (RSS)

The posts to this blog category have been reorganised as a book entitled The History and Nature of Capitalism which includes rewritten versions of 9 of the Capitalism blog entries, linked through a wide range of clickable footnotes (obviously this is all designed as an ebook (a hard copy version would make for a very unwieldy book)).

The book can be accessed from here: The History and Nature of Capitalism: The Book

The problem of 2010 is ‘sovereign debt’ (well – one of them anyway!).

Western nations have profligately continued to fund social welfare measures — such as aged pensions, free health care, free education, unemployment benefits, child and family support, poverty alleviation … — as though they still lived in a regulated and protected world.

But the world has been deregulated, protection has been traded for globalisation. “Public debt sustainability has exploded as a serious issue in advanced economies”.

The social welfare component built into production and financial sector costs in Western nations is disappearing. Like the Cheshire cat, we are left with little but the grin! Deregulation has shifted the costs from ‘the economy’ to sovereign debt.

Western nation-states, once firmly in control of economic activity within their borders are, in the deregulated, privatised world of the 21st century, decreasingly able to shield their populations from the exploitative consequences of unregulated and internationalised financial manipulation.

Now, there is no international forum capable of limiting and directing the bargaining advantages of finance houses whose international financial dealings eclipse those of the countries in which they do business.

No longer is the economy the means by which communities meet their needs and wants. Now communities service an international network of independent financial corporations which need accept no reciprocal responsibilities for their welfare.

Nations which, prior to 2008, were largely coping with the costs of scaled down versions of earlier public social welfare costs, now find themselves with unsustainable debt. Another crisis similar to that of 2008 would introduce many of them to structural adjustment programs similar to that currently being implemented in Greece.

Western nations are beginning to understand what ‘structural adjustment’ really means in a globalised neoliberal world. They just did not take the problems seriously when Third World countries complained about the effects of such programs over the past thirty years.

How is it that over the past three years, nations could be held to ransom by international financial corporations?

Why weren’t both nations and international financial corporations alerted by the financial woes experienced in the so-called ‘Tiger’ economies of the 1990s and so prepared for the problems of the last three years?

How did we get ourselves into this mess?

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Exploring the Nature of Capitalism
Entries (RSS) ; Comments (RSS)

The posts to this blog category have been reorganised as a book entitled The History and Nature of Capitalism which includes rewritten versions of 9 of the Capitalism blog entries, linked through a wide range of clickable footnotes (obviously this is all designed as an ebook (a hard copy version would make for a very unwieldy book)).

The book can be accessed from here: The History and Nature of Capitalism: The Book

We are at the start of a new century. A century which promised so much.

 Yet it is threatened by forces greater than we, inhabitants of a capitalist world, have ever seen. And, largely, they have been invoked by us.

But for capitalism, they would not threaten.

What will happen in the next fifty years?

Will we see an ice free Arctic? acidified oceans? rising sea levels?

And then, there’s ‘global warming’, desertification and massive species loss!

All these seem very likely, even in my lifetime.

And there is another set of problems looming in this 21st century. They threaten the world as surely as increasing levels of greenhouse gasses. And they, also, are a consequence of capitalism.

As the empires of Western Europe have crumbled, the institutions in their post-colonial territories, established by them to ensure continuity with the colonial past, have become decreasingly effective.

Post-colonial territories are suffering turmoil and chaos as they metamorphose into communities which exhibit similarities with the pre-colonial communities from which they came.

And we will not, willingly, let them do so!

We still know that the world needs ‘developing’ and we know that wherever countries and communities are disintegrating, we have a deep responsibility to step in and save them from themselves.

Perhaps that’s because, as the Director of the US Defense Intelligence Agency, in testimony to the US Senate Select Intelligence Committee on 10 January 1995, claimed:

it’s important to remember that the world is already awash in weapon systems. These range from the relatively simple small arms and mines, to more advanced hand held surface to air missiles, to increasingly advanced anti-ship cruise missiles.

Any country with hard currency can and will get these systems.

And:

 In the last six years, Washington has stepped up its sales and transfers of high-technology weapons, military training, and other military assistance to governments regardless of their respect for human rights, democratic principles, or nonproliferation. All that matters is that they have pledged their assistance in the global war on terrorism.
(Rachel Stohl (2008))

Perhaps our continued concern is, as Obafemi Awolowo claimed in 1947,  “the result of a later compunction of conscience which usually dawns on any evil-doer who is not hardened beyond redemption”.

• We invaded their territories;
• forcibly included them in European empires;
• created poorly established ‘post-colonial’ nations;
• co-opted them into our ‘Cold War’;
• supplied them with both weapons and military training;
• fomented insurrection within their territories;
• and blame them for the ensuing chaos.

Now,  they are killing each other, and the weapons have been (and are being) supplied by us!

Is it any wonder that so many post-colonial nation-states have become dysfunctional?

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Exploring the Nature of Capitalism
Entries (RSS) ; Comments (RSS)

The posts to this blog category have been reorganised as a book entitled The History and Nature of Capitalism which includes rewritten versions of 9 of the Capitalism blog entries, linked through a wide range of clickable footnotes (obviously this is all designed as an ebook (a hard copy version would make for a very unwieldy book)).

The book can be accessed from here: The History and Nature of Capitalism: The Book

It is said that the aphorism ‘Know Yourself’ was inscribed in the forecourt of the Temple of Apollo at Delphi — Finding out who we are can be an unsettling experience.

Not only do human beings gild memories of experiences in their own lifetimes, they are extremely adept at reinventing those of their historical past.
It can be an educative experience to strip away what the French philosopher Voltaire called the ‘fable upon which we are all agreed’. 

To understand the nature of capitalism, we need to examine the actual practices of Western European colonisation during the 19th and early 20th centuries.

Unless we do, not knowing our history, we might well, as Edmund Burke suggested, unwittingly repeat it.

The 19th century was the century in which unregulated capitalism lay at the heart of most Western European public and private policy and practice. It was the century in which ‘The Poor’, long a vexing problem for responsible people — and, of course, a source of cheap labour and profit for capitalist enterprise — were taught to work.

By the end of the century, life was slowly improving for Western Europe’s poor. But, for the responsible middle classes of Western Europe, the job was far from complete!
A new ‘Poor’ had been found, indigent and slothful, in need of discipline and direction, in the extensive colonies for which they had accepted responsibility.

The next century would be the one in which Western working poor slowly gained legal rights and entitlements, enshrined in labour awards. The wealth flowing into Western countries from the rest of the world would bring increasing material prosperity, improved living conditions, healthier diets, and even, for a period, the chance to pursue ‘leisure’ activities. This would not be true for the inhabitants of Europe’s colonial empires.

The 19th was not only the century when The Poor learned to work. It was also the century of Western European colonial expansion. Populations around the world found themselves designated ‘natives’ (the Western European name for ‘The Poor’ of their colonies) and included, whether they liked it or not, in Western European empires. They, like Europe’s Poor before them, would be taught to work!
The consequences for indigenous populations would all-too-often be catastrophic.

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