Capitalism and the Commercial World

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Capitalism and the Commercial World

• Anthropology 112
• Jodi Perin
• Adapted from Ann Samuelsons Presentations
• Economics 1 and Economics 2

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Whats an economic system?

• Economic systems are the institutions and ideas
  that people use and the actions they take in
  order to get resources that they either need or
  desire. (Bates)

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Sound familiar . . .?

• Subsistence strategies explain how people get
  their food
• Foraging
• Gardening
• Intensive Agriculture
• Economics explains how people get food plus
  everything else they want/need

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So whats capitalism?

• Predominantly market exchanges of goods and
  services
• Use of money
• Profit-seeking
• Focus on wealth
• accumulation as an end unto itself.
• Like any system, requires
• some outside authority to enforce rules (e.g.
  property rights)

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When/how/why did capitalism come about?

• Approx. 1600s, in changing feudal Europe
• Development of rudimentary markets (e.g. wool),
  banks, joint stock companies, insurance
  companies, etc.
• Many, many theories on why this happened
• Permeable aristocracy
• Protestant work ethic
• Negative Protestant ethic thesis
• Free peasants
• Etc.

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When/how/why did capitalism come about?

• The individuals who constructed the commercial
  world had no grand vision, and they could not
  have foreseen the consequences of their actions.
  They simply took advantage of the opportunities
  that they found. They expanded their personal
  economic power, concentrating the benefits of
  growth, and shifted the costs to society at large
  much as political rulers had done earlier. -
  Bodley pg. 341
• Devoped separately from democracy!

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How did (does) capitalism work?

• Everything -- goods, services -- can be bought
  and sold
• Once you have an agreed-upon way to exchange
  (e.g. money) you can buy/sell anything that there
  is a market for, unless the state prohibits it
  (or even if it does)
• Use of credit
• Radically different from tribal and political
  scale societies

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Classic economists take on capitalism

• If there are enough producers and consumers to
  compete, then . . .
• Supply and demand determine fair prices
• People are rewarded according to their abilities
  and how hard they work
• People are rational
• People get what they want
• Growth is good

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But . . .

• Monetary market for labor means households are no
  longer self-sufficient
• Why is this a problem?
• Emphasis on constant growth leads to territorial
  expansion (e.g. colonialism)
• Plus, there are limits to growth
• People arent necessarily better off --
  capitalism creates major stratification (poverty)
• Unintended consequences.
• Population growth
• Instability, polarization

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Capitalism and classes

• Elites -often successful entrepreneurs/financiers
  their descendents
• Middle Class(es)
• The poor - those with few/no goods or services to
  sell or little access to markets, who must still
  buy good/services in order to survive
• Currently predominantly former colonial nations
  (3rd World) -- especially sub-Saharan Africa

Lakshimi Mittal, Steel and Manufacturing, India
A homeless man in Pakistan
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Example the sugar eaters in England

• Pre 1650 sugar rare luxury for elites
• 1650-1750 sugar grown in colonies, fuels slave
  trade and later migration
• 1750 - 1850
• Industrialization sugar combined with tea and
  baked goods is a quick, cheap way to deliver
  calories to workers
• Factory workers buy cheap sugar and caffeine to
  keep them going (sound familiar?)
• Sugar replaces many other sources of calories
  (e.g. fruits, veggies, etc.), resulting in poor
  nutrition for working classes, but factory owners
  and sugar producers get rich!

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The Sugar eaters, cont.

• In theory, capitalism as a system allows us to
  get what we want and need. However, what we want
  and need is subject to and shaped by many forces,
  which we are often unaware of. Plus, there are
  the unintended consequences.

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So why should I care?

• The capitalist system affects what you eat, wear,
  do for a living, etc.
• Capitalism is here to stay, and its gone global
  (even more than before)
• The benefits and costs of this are definitely
  still under debate, to put it lightly

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Coming up . . .

• Anthropologists are very interested in the
  expansion of the world capitalist system and how
  it affects people across time and space
  globalization

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Questions for discussion

• Name three popular celebrities that you would
  classify as elites in our commercial system.
  How did these people gain their elite status, as
  far as you know? Did they earn this status, in
  your opinion?
• Compare a hypothetical elite person in our
  commercial scale society and an elite person in a
  political scale society (e.g. the Inka). How are
  they the same? How are they different?
• Compare a hypothetical commoner/poor person in
  our commercial scale society and in a political
  scale society (e.g. Mesopotamia). How are they
  the same? How are they different? Now compare
  these people with a person in a domestic scale
  society.
• In your opinion, how does American culture view
  capitalism and being rich? What kinds of
  messages do we receive from the media and other
  cultural institutions in the U.S. about why
  people are rich?