A MILD HISTORICAL DIVERSION
To fully consider this
proposition, we will view the substantive values of human societies
in light of the emerging formal rationality. We will look at
an historical account, using whatever values facilitated the
empirical economy to reflect a substantive order. This follows
from the interpretation of Karl Polanyi:
The fount of the substantive
concept is the empirical economy. It can be briefly (if not engagingly)
defined as an instituted process of interaction between man and
his environment, which results in a continuous supply of want
satisfying material means .... The instituting of the economic
process vests that process with unity and stability .... The
human economy then, is embedded and enmeshed in institutions,
economic and noneconomic. The inclusion of the noneconomic is
vital. For religion and government may be as important for the
structuring of the economy as monetary institutions or the availability
of tools and machines themselves .... (Polanyi, 1957)
We find in the beginning
of human community, persons gathering in clans or tribes. There
was power ordering even at this elementary level, yet there were
often narrow thresholds in which power and wealth could be accumulated.
Lewis Haney (1936) mentions a "tendency to regard trade
and the crafts with disfavor" among the early Indians as
well as the early Hebrew. And the Greeks distinguished between
economics (oikonomik), refering to economics in consumption
(i.e., the household), and chrematistics (chrematistik),
refering to "wealth getting" activities including exchange.
Chrematistics was again analyzed in terms of the 'natural' and
the 'unnatural'. Natural meant simple barter for one's wants;
unnatural meant retail trade for the sake of money-making.
In the case of India,
social development was conceived as the outward extension of
personal development. The concept of 'dharma', meaning litterally
'to hold together', formed the root of social relations. Three
centuries before the western modern epoch we see an advanced
economic system:
As early as 322 BC Kautilya,
the greatest economist and sociologist of the age, advocated
a balanced economy, through regulating prices, standardising
quality produce, nationalising mines and capital resources, harmonising
relationships between ethnic and caste groups, safeguarding the
interest of the wage-earners, utilising the irrigation and man
power potentials and above all recognition of the services of
individuals taking up community works. For the first time it
ushered in a new era of collective enterprises in the rural sector
for encouraging joint farming, joint management of irrigation,
pasture land, educational and recreational activities. In the
subsequent age, too, Asoka, the Piyadarsi, endeavoured to build
up social integration by undermining the solidarity of the sacredotal
Brahmanical class, and, exposing the hollowness of their complicated
rituals. Earnestly he devoted himself to replacing the sacredotal
cult with universally accepted values, like service to mother
and father, teacher (guru), learned (Brahmana), cordial behaviour
with one's asociates and respect and love for all creeds and
creatures. These values he called 'Law of Piety', which he inscribed
on rocks at all corners of his far flung empire in the regional
script (Brahmi and Kharosti) and in the language of the elite-few.
Needless to stress, the voice of humanity left by Asoka as permanent
records in the lingua-franca of the country, was a positive step
taken by him to bring into practice social reality and social
justice among the down-trodden people by upgrading their morals
and ethical values. (Sengupta, 1976; 13)
'Bharahatvarsa',
a concept of social interaction, evolved at this time in the
Indo-Aryan culture. This was a process of social development,
with cooperation being the highest form. Development progressed,
by this concept, from the simple gathering of individuals who
initially communicate, conflict and compete within the grouping;
then they accomodate, assimilate and cooperate. The process to
cooperation is not inevitable, nor strictly inherent in social
groupings, but must be striven for within each person's development.
Integration of communities,
is not a matter of chance or accident. Nor, is it something given
as dole. It is always sought for, and cultivated by the individuals,
who form the group, community and the society. Good individuals
are, therefore, the pre-requisite of a good society. Also good
individuals should have good life. Charaska, the court physician
of Kanishka (AD 2nd century) says that the life of that man is
good who is well wisher of all creatures, who does not covet
other people's goods; who is a teller of truth; who is peace-loving;
who acts with deliberation, is not negligent, and so on. In ancient
India the social institutions were the workshops for the output
of good individuals. Greater importance was given to 'mind' for
aesthetic development and ethical perfection than to life and
body. The primary objective was the extension of the dimensions
of the individuall's personality through moral, aesthetic and
religious development for setting up common human values - beauty,
truth, and goodness - for the peaceful existence of human race.
... (Ibid, 25, 26)
The guild organization
existed in Indian society, known as the Sreni. As early
as the fourth century B.C., Panini the Grammarian refered to
the Sreni as an association of adults knowing a common
trade and craft. As in the European instance, this organization
was not restricted to economic pursuits but was extended to humanitarian
works-- the construction of the house of assembly, temple, garden,
etc. For the purposes of technical coordination, a Karya-
chintakah (literally, one who thinks and plans) was appointed
to oversee its operations. Only 'virtuous' men dedicated to Dharma--
"devoid of avarice and a well-wisher of the group"
were appointed to this position. The policies of the Sreni
resemble what we would call the cooperative organization: 1)
Benefits were shared in proportion to the use made of the organization;
2) Capital return was limited. Much of its income was invested
in communal works; 3) Appointed officials (Karyachintakahs)
were given tenure and security but no organizational control.
Their authority was subject to review, and; 4) Members controlled
the Sreni organization not because they contributed capital
but because they participated in its activities (Ibid, 46)
The Indian nation achieved
a remarkable degree of integration considering the cultural diversity
and geographic expanse. This was done by a federation of 'village
republics'. Such republics were remarkable also for the degree
of democracy and local government. Their disruption coincided
with the advent of the East India Company and the centralization
of all executive and judicial powers in the British Bureaucracy
(Narayan, 1977). Since the British withdrawal, India has attempted
re-instituting the village network.
In the European clan,
or gentes, we find no indication of personal inheritance of property.
Social bonds were rooted in consideration for the ancestors,
which prompted the burial of personal wealth with the entombed.
As the village community evolved, property was transferable within
family lines, but as yet this was considered only as regards
movable property: cattle, implements, arms and dwelling-house.
Land-- the basis of subsistence and culture-- was still held
in common and distributed by representation at the folkmote (or
assembly), principally on the basis of need. The early Germanic
village communities were virtually self-sufficient groups of
households: democratically organized and of similar wealth. Exchange
for gain was not tolerated within the community., and its economy
was directed by earnest interpretations of the Christian doctrine.
The economic relations systematically introduced notions of cosmopolitan
brotherhood, condemnation of slavery, natural community of property,
dignity of labor and charity. (Haney, 1936; 94,95) Eventually,
the notion of inheritance began to change things:
Under whatever systems of inheritance the chances of family life
would bring about changes in the relation of property in land to labour
available to work it, so that some families would find themselves with more
land than they could cultivate and some with less. Moreover, differences of
temperament come in. Some men are industrious and acquisitive, others
feckless, idle or generous. There is a certain tendency to check
accumulation. The richer family marries its children earlier, so that
numbers increase faster and land per head is reduced in the third
generation. But this tendency has generally proved too weak to offset the
forces pressing against equality. In a society which allows inequality of
possessions between families, it perpetuates itself. Those with excess land
can make use of the labour of others, either by employing them at wages or
letting land to them for a share of the produce. Either way, property
becomes a source of income independently of its owner's work.
(Robinson, 1970; 41)
Originally (the story
goes) there was strict equality among members in the village
system; but with inheritance, land per person would fluctuate.
Soon certain members would be divorced from their inheritance--
there simply would not be enough cultivatable land. Others would
have more land than they could farm. They, by letting land out
to those expelled, became lords. Others were forced to find new
sources of income: a new class arose within the peasantry: the
hirelings or cottagers.
The lord was often represented by an official within the village system, but the
village nonetheless maintained its own jurisdiction. We are told that "in all
matters concerning the community's domain, the folkmote retained its supremacy
and often claimed submission from the lord himself in land tenure matters"
(Kropotkin, 1904; 164).
In Europe, towards the ninth and tenth
centuries with the invasions of the Normans, Arabs and the Ugrians, the
villages constructed walls which, they realized, could resist the
encroachments of the lords as well as the invading
foreigners.
The whole process of
liberation progressed by a series of imperceptible acts of devotion
to the common cause, accomplished by men who came out of the
mases-- by unknown heroes whose very names have not been preserved
by history. The wonderful movement of the God's peace (treuga
Dei) by which the popular mases endeavoured
to put a limit to the endless family fueds of the noble families, was born
in the young towns, the bishops and the citizens trying to extend to the
nobles the peace they had established within their own town walls. ...
(Kropotkin, 1904; 167)
Arriving at about this
period (twelth and thirteenth century) was the 'guild'-- the
union, or 'brotherhood' within a craft. The city emerged from
the simple federation of such village communities and guilds.
Materials were purchased, and products marketed in common. Manual
labor had no connotation of mentality or inferiority but was
embodied in a sense of "justice" to the community,
of "right" towards both producer and consumer.
Although the villages had successfully resisted the intrusions of
fuedal lords, they had not extended their freedom to rural subjects. The lords
were invited into the villages to live as equals: this the lords did not do --
but developed divisions within the cities and surrounding villages. "Drawing
large incomes from the estates they had still retained, they surrounded
themselves with numerous clients and feudalized the customs and habits of the
city itself" (Kropotkin, 218)
To enhance the consumption
of these lords, more was demanded of the peasantry, and cities
were structured toward exchange. The city then took a life of
its own: 'Political Arithematic' was introduced; the unit of
analysis shifted from manor to state; the criteria became money,
the method -- competition. The rural peasantry even assisted
the process of state-building.
The peasants supported the Paris mob who were the spearhead of
the French Revolution in smashing the aristocracy, destroying feudal
priviledge and breaking up the estates of the nobility and the church into
small freeholds. Beyond that they had no use for radical ideas. Liberty,
Equality and Fraternity ended up as the charter for private property.
(Robinson, 1970; 58)
Through a process of
enclosures the peasantry were expelled from their land and from
their culture and livelihood. And for no better option, they
moved to the city to form a source of cheap labor. The argument
is advanced that they should be given their livelihood: that
now being capital. In some societies, where substantive values
have accomodated the formal, this is not interesting. On the
margin of adjustment, however, these considerations are broadened.
Ivan Illich (1981), who writes for this threshold, suggests a
vernacular domain:
The tension and balance
between vernacular work and industrial labor – paid and unpaid
– is the key issue on the third dimension of options, distinct
from political right and left and from technical soft and hard.
Industrial labor, paid and otherwise exacted, will not disappear.
But when development, wage labor and its shadow encroach upon
vernacular work the relative priority of one or the other constitutes
the issue. We are free to choose between hierarchically managed
standardized work that may be paid or unpaid, self-selected or
imposed on the one hand and, on the other, we can protect our
freedom to choose ever new invented forms of simple, integrated
subsistence actions which have an outcome that is unpredictable
to the bureaucrat, unmanagable by hierarchies and oriented to
the values shared within a specific community. (Illich, 1981;
24)
Illich (1980) tells of
a French essay, dated 1777, which demonstrates the European ambivalence
toward the new order. While forced labor was considered a punishment
for sin or crime in France, the Dutch Calvinists or North German
workhouses were established to transform "useless beggars
into useful worvers". (Illich, 1980; 5). The destitute still
resisted such efforts to qualify them for work, and the community
was prone to shelter and hide them. The Prussian Secretary of
the Interior, 1747, recounts:
... from morning till
night, we try to have this [poverty-] police cruise through our
streets to stop beggary ... but as soon as soldiers, commoners
or the crowd notice the arrest of a beggar to bring him to the
poor house, they riot, beat-up our officers sometimes hurting
them grieviously and liberate the beggar. It has become almost
impossible to get the poverty-police to take to the street...."
(Ibid, 5)
Under the Mercantilists,
the spirit of nationalism developed into forms of economic warfare
and frugality. Price was determined by exchange, no longer by
the substance of an item or by the village on need basis. With
the new order ensued the loss of community and the accrual of
the individual. As individuals grew to accept their obligations
to the state, they similtaneously subdued the same to each other.
To replace the concept of social obligations, the "welfare
state' was suggested and has been implemented to varying degrees
of seriousness and success. Such obligations now transpire within
its bureaucratic framework.
The modern state is a
function of external as well as internal forces. It is not always
in balance, as the Mercantilists suggested. An equilibrium may
be gained within the international arena, with one or more states
in continuous disequilibrium. As international market competition
becomes more intense, the bureaucratic state is invited to take
a more active role in structuring sectoral development. This
implies a degree of regional emphasis which favors the industrial
growth-core regions over the agricultural subsistence-peripheral
ones. Within the core areas there are competing groups, establishing
'center coalitions' of capitalists vying for state power. Lunday
(l98l) refers to these as political struggles for 'state hegemony'.
>Where interest is in
alleviating rural poverty structures, awareness should be directed
toward rural interests in maintain¬ ing them. Das Gupta suggests
a modeling of partisanship through ‘relative political weights'.
Unlike the Engelian conception of state as suppressing class
struggles, he assumes that "the logic of conducting power
requires that a political ordering of interests and a sequencing
of their realization be worked out" (Das Gupta, 1981; 4).
Specifically of rural impoverishment, he comments:
Consider cases where
such ordering is easy because the dominant interests are highly
congruent. Take the case of those poor countrires where mass
poverty needs urgent attention. Most of the poor people in these
countries are located in rural areas. The rural economy in poor
countries based on a mixed economy is clearly dominated by higher
landed interests. Depending on the degree of industrialization,
the industrial part of the economy is dominated by a different
set of interests. It is not difficult to see why landed interests,
who in a large part have been instrumental in generating poverty,
would have a political interest in maintaining rural poverty.
Leading industrial groups may not feel so strongly about maintaining
rural poverty, although the logic of cheap food supply and cheap
labour supply may bring them politically closer to the rural
landed groups. The peasant groups, however, have the advantage
of numbers-- but this advantage is nullified to the extent they
remain unorganized or unrepresented. Political authority in such
situations would naturally reflect this balance of revealed interests.
How then will the case for poverty reduction ever get a fair
trial? (Das Gupta, 1981; 4)
Labor also formed its
political coalitions and learned the skills of weilding power.
Marxism emerged with capitalism in the industrial stage, and
into the same vertical rationality. It is possible, however,
for several dimensions to comprise an economic order. As in the
Greek oikonomik and chrematistik, there remains distinct dimensions
within an economic system. Remnants of both village and feudal
economic systems remain. Marxism conflicts with capitalism for
the same reason that others are assimilated: boundary delineation.