Fighting to stimulate an economy

[Nathan Dobson]

An ex-colonel of the British army once said to me that there is nothing more effective at stimulating an economy than war. I am sure he is right. Faced with death, people move faster, work harder, talk more, and come
closer together. You might stumble across an oil well or a treasure chest but if you are not united... War or fighting to the death is an “end game” where the aim is
to wipe out the adversary, but any kind of dispute, debate or controversy that
comes close to igniting that kind of energy without actually producing
violence, can only be good for an economy.

 

On the internet there is (almost) no threat of
violence, no "end-game", and no physical body to be tarnished by a
few ill-chosen words (in fact we can choose our words very carefully). We are
free to be quite radical, throwing bombs left, right and centre, stirring up
debate and discussion here and there, contesting meaning, joining forces,
building standpoints, finding common ground etc, but at the same time without
the threat of violence, people’s investment just does not
matter quite so much. They can join in discussions willy-nilly, take on
alternative personae and leave, ending the debate just as easily.

[Nathan Dobson]

Hi Joy

On the internet fear of violence isn't a factor, we can be more controversial and stir things up, this is good for an economy. It's a shame that when you don't need to invest your physical body it's all worth a great deal less.

[Keith Hart]

Another way of putting it is that the products of the mind matter less than physical safety. That is why, some say, academics fight so bitterly over trivial issues. Little is at stake. Generally speaking, people are less inclined to take up the cudgels in government and business, because the costs of real conflict are higher.

But since you posted this in economic anthropology, Nathan, I would have thought a more conventional explanation of war as an economic stimulus is that accumulating war materials and then destroying them is a perfect recipe for capitalist expansion. In the middle of the second world war Joseph Schumpeter suggested that bombing all those cities was a great opportunity for economic growth after the war. He didn't have so many takers at the time, but he does now.

[Nathan Dobson]

It’s a popular news story when a physical fight breaks out amongst politicians, it makes for good viewing when you know that it’s controlled and no-one will really get hurt. It would be a lot different watching a full scale riot break out of a parliamentary debate.

But I’m wondering if there is a way to stimulate people to act as though their lives depended on it when really there is a lot less at stake. If violence is the best way of making people act, what hope is there for an economy that aims to avoid it?

[Alexander Parkinson]

Hello folks,

It is my belief that as long as our broader social order enabled value creation through self-interested transactions, without more concern for our fellow humans, we will always be in danger of falling victim to the types of "opportunities" that Schumpeter suggests (as Keith mentions above). Until more people begin challenging the economic foundations of capitalism, the belief that it is in our nature to "Truck. Barter, Exchange", and sometimes even wage war, will continue to predominate. The market will always be positioned to threaten the mutuality upon which it rests (see Stephen Gudeman).

But I wouldn't under-estimate the power of the internet as a space for debate and as an arena for collective action to mobilise. A little off subject but closer to my home is the campaign against the American owners of Manchester United. The football fans see a their beloved social institution being undermined by greedy capitalists whose highly leveraged buyout saddled their club/company with debt. The American owners see a pound sign (or maybe a dollar sign?). The 'Green and Gold' campaign all began from a fansite called RedIssue and has resulted in several mass protests and displays of agency that one could argue harm the commercial interests of the owners. The battle is on-going. Nevertheless, it is interesting that over a hundred-thousand people chose to react instantly when they saw their football club as under threat but remain socially inert on larger matters - I wonder how many of those 100,000+ voted to elect the leader of their country.

I think a lot of this stems from economic literacy (or illiteracy). I personally was not taught anything about capitalism or economics in school. Given that we live in a 'market society', I find this quite alarming (although it does suit with the most assests to maintain the status quo). In fact, it wasn't until I took investment management exams (after graduating) that I even learned the difference between micro and macro economics! I do see a lot of value in web-based discussion such as this and much of it can filter through to face-to-face conversations with others - my friends and family all seem very interested in my postgrad studies in anthropology. People just do not seem aware. So I say let us keep talking to each other and to others. Who knows, there may be enough of us one day to make a real stir where it matters - in a non-violent way of course!

Alex

[Keith Hart]

Hi Alex, Thanks for this rich post, each part of which I can relate to directly, but none more than to Man U (I spent my first 17 years living in Old Trafford, the district, not the ground).

1. Steve Gudeman belongs to a long and noble tradition that includes Aristotle, Polanyi and communists of various stripes. Here the market is equated with trading profit and opposed to mutual interests of most kinds, indeed to society itself. But there is another tradition on the left that would include most cooperative socialists such as Marcel Mauss which holds that the market takes many institutional forms, not just capitalist and that these are not necessarily incompatible with mutuality. The problem then is to identify market forms consistent with cooperation, solidarity etc, but still based on buying and selling in some way.

2. The case of the Glazers is a good one for the second approach. Clearly the Premier League has pushed the market principle to an extreme where the only value is money capital and everyone else suffers the consequences of an ownership model that allows leverage of debt to override all other interests. The issue may be one of an extreme reliance on capitalism, but it is unlikely that Man U under any alternative model would dispense with selling tickets (and shirts) to pay wages. In any case, capitalism is a broad category which is always mixed up with other organizational principles in practice. So the way the debate has evolved, towards discussion of a variety of ownership models, is perhaps more fruitful than inveighing against the Glazers as a personification of an abstraction, rewarding as it is to villify them. For me, the real villains are the Edwards family, descendants of Louis, a Manchester butcher, who made obscene fortunes by selling to the Glazers, when they were supposed to be stewards of the club.

3. I couldn't agree with you more about the criminal absence of economic education in our schools. It is truly extraordinary that most people graduate without learning anything about money, for example. It was worse than that: what students do learn about the economy through the social sciences, at school and university, actually reduces their ability to understand it. The bourgeoisie may be the only class in history to practice the diametrical opposite of their ideology, relying on ideologues to promote their mystifications as God's truth. This conforms to what British conservatives have always thought: that the people should not gain anything socially or politially useful from education. Or, as Rousseau said, education damages the mind; it is intended to impair our native abilities as human beings. Incidentally, I think that playing cards became popular as an indirect way of teaching people market priniciples. Keith

Alexander Parkinson said:

Hello folks,
It is my belief that as long as our broader social order enabled value creation through self-interested transactions, without more concern for our fellow humans, we will always be in danger of falling victim to the types of "opportunities" that Schumpeter suggests (as Keith mentions above). Until more people begin challenging the economic foundations of capitalism, the belief that it is in our nature to "Truck. Barter, Exchange", and sometimes even wage war, will continue to predominate. The market will always be positioned to threaten the mutuality upon which it rests (see Stephen Gudeman). But I wouldn't under-estimate the power of the internet as a space for debate and as an arena for collective action to mobilise. A little off subject but closer to my home is the campaign against the American owners of Manchester United. The football fans see a their beloved social institution being undermined by greedy capitalists whose highly leveraged buyout saddled their club/company with debt. The American owners see a pound sign (or maybe a dollar sign?). The 'Green and Gold' campaign all began from a fansite called RedIssue and has resulted in several mass protests and displays of agency that one could argue harm the commercial interests of the owners. The battle is on-going. Nevertheless, it is interesting that over a hundred-thousand people chose to react instantly when they saw their football club as under threat but remain socially inert on larger matters - I wonder how many of those 100,000+ voted to elect the leader of their country. I think a lot of this stems from economic literacy (or illiteracy). I personally was not taught anything about capitalism or economics in school. Given that we live in a 'market society', I find this quite alarming (although it does suit with the most assests to maintain the status quo). In fact, it wasn't until I took investment management exams (after graduating) that I even learned the difference between micro and macro economics! I do see a lot of value in web-based discussion such as this and much of it can filter through to face-to-face conversations with others - my friends and family all seem very interested in my postgrad studies in anthropology. People just do not seem aware. So I say let us keep talking to each other and to others. Who knows, there may be enough of us one day to make a real stir where it matters - in a non-violent way of course!

Alex

[Alexander Parkinson]

Hi Keith,

Thanks for taking the time to respond to my comments.

I’ve been reading some of Gudeman’s work recently (dialectics of market and mutuality), in a Polanyian context. I always find it interesting to think about where ideas have come from. It gets quite confusing sometimes because the influences can obviously switch depending on what you are looking at, but it does seem to help me understand the essence of ideas. For instance, James Carrier (in Gudeman’s Economic Persuasions) shows that the differences of the formalist/substantivist debate can be traced to Malinowski/Mauss, and Spencer/Durkheim respectively. I suppose he could have also regressed further to Plato (ideal forms)/Aristotle (empiricism) – although you could end up doing that for most arguments! Nevertheless, I have yet to find a web-site that explicitly maps ideas out in this way and I do think it would be useful – it would have been to me last year anyway when I was starting out in anthropology!

That’s a good point you raise about resisting seeing the Glazers as a personification of an abstraction. The club was in danger when it first became a PLC and it isn’t the Glazers fault that they were able to seize an opportunity – all this “die Glazer die” is a bit too much! You mentioned the variety of ownership models. I wonder… are the “Red Knights" (consortium of investors) an example of a market form that is based on mutuality? It seems that there is a lot more to their bid than the profit motive, and there is a common goal. Also, the price that they are willing to pay in comparison to the club’s earnings certainly doesn’t make it look like a sound investment. (Totally agree about the Edwards family by the way!)

I’d like to think that things aren’t the way you posit – with the masses being intentionally dumbed down – but I only have to turn on my TV to see that they are this way. The current state of affairs can’t surely be attributable to apathy alone. Given that we supposedly live in a democracy this is even more paradoxical! But I had never thought about entertainment devices grooming us for the market. Very interesting idea indeed. Hey, maybe we should develop a socialist form of Monopoly to counter this hegemony!

Alex

(ps I’m just finishing off my dissertation for the MA (taught) Social Anthropology from Manchester – John Gledhill mentioned you were from over here when we read The Memory Bank for his class. I didn’t realise it was so close to the hallowed ground though! I’ve mostly lived in north Manchester near Bury myself although I have travelled around a fair bit. Thanks for making The Memory Bank so accessible by the way – both electronically and in content!)

[Nathan Dobson]

“Mes que un club”

FC Barcelona’s motto rings out over the heads of the crowd of angry investment bankers that line the streets of Premiership clubs like a call from the working class members from which they were born.

Owned by the fans for the fans, the club is the apparent socialist anomaly in a sea of greedy football club owners. My home town club of York is also owned by the fans. It was snatched from the abyss by a supporters trust that bought the club within minutes of it disintegrating entirely to debt.

I can’t help thinking that geographical restrictions used to make things a great deal easier. Now that people can dip into markets all over the world, the bonds for “local clubs” are a lot less strong. FC Barcelona is different. Ever since it’s social club was attacked and it’s president killed by Franco’s thugs, it has represented a great deal more than sport. With a membership of 173,071, an array of basketball, handball, hockey, tennis, futsal and rugby teams, and an established sense of identity, the club has grown into a Catalan institution. Worship Messi’s magnificence.

This is seemingly the ideal mutual organisation but with 1,343 supporters clubs around the world, has it really become such a global player without capitalistic expansionist tactics?