Capstone Project on "Making of Economic Society"

Capstone Project 7 pages (2145 words) Sources: 3

[EXCERPT] . . . .

Economic Society and New World

The Making of Economic Society and the New World

The economic history of the United States has been one more of comforts than shortage. Although many have persevered through the pangs of hunger on the streets of America, it also rings true that the middle class, in a liberal sense of the concept, has enjoyed an affluent standard of living atypical of much of the world throughout history. Such a secure lifestyle, to be sure, disallows key adaptations, legacies from our evolutionary environment, from going realized, and has left Americans exposed to threats they don't notice exist. Oftentimes, the further developed this process of domestication is -- typically characterized by large quantities of people in cities, dependent on the importation of basic necessities -- the more entrenched are privileged elites, who wield great influence over financial institutions and, especially in contemporary Capitalism, market making mechanisms.

As "economic individuals" -- or what many refer to as Homo Economicus -- we miss out on key experiences related to our evolutionary origins. The bountiful material found in the city life of developed nations gives rise to a near total dependence of the individual on variables outside his influence. The lion's share of Americans, for example, have never eaten food they've grown, hunted, raised meat, ground grain to make flour, nor made bread out of flour. This line of reasoning, as Americans have lived and learned over the past two years of the financial crisis, does not apply only to our cities, but so too does it our entire nation. Just as Los Angeles and Bostonians must import good produced elsewhere, so too must the country. (Heilbroner 2)

"Nobody ever saw a dog make a fair and deliberate exchange of one bone for another with another dog," wrote Adam Smith his Wealth of Nations. "Nobody ever saw one animal by its gestures and natural cries signify to another, this is mine, that yours', I am willing to give this for that." (Heilbroner 3)

In the proceeding passage, Smith outlined "a certain propensity in human nature…the propensity to truck, barter and exchange one thing for another." What smith was describing, though he thought it to be a universal characteristic of mankind's natural behavior, was mans mores and traditions in civilization. Author Derrick Jensen describes civilization as "a culture -- that is, a complex of stories, institutions and artifacts -- that both leads to and emerges from the growth of cities (civilization, see civil: from civis, meaning citizen, from Latin civitatis, meaning city-state.), with cities being defined -- so as to distinguish them from camps, villages and so on -- as people living more or less permanently in one place in densities high enough to require the routine importation of food and other necessities of life." (Jensen) This process is accompanied by the establishment of belief systems, such as money, religion, defense and security. Concordant with the history before its time, it is in the cities in the United States where most wealth has accumulated, leaving rural settings all the poorer for it.

Despite attributing some of mans characteristics pertaining to his social environment, to his inherent biological nature, Adam Smith "was the man who made England, and then the whole western world, understand just how the market kept society together…"(Heilbroner WP 70) Although both love and hated as the father of Capitalism, much research suggests Smith's free markets and invisible hands exist today in extremely different forms than those of which he wrote -- perhaps because many of Adam Smith's ideas and theories assumed a state of perfect liberty. In his time, Smith observed the mainstay of history, "the vile maxim of the masters of mankind: "All for ourselves, and nothing for other People." He understood that the invisible hand would destroy decent human existences "unless government takes pains to prevent" such an outcome, as must be the case "in every improved and civilized society." Sacrificed due to an unchecked invisible hand would be community, environment and human values. Even elites themselves would suffer at market forces, which, as Noam Chomsky writes, "is why the business classes have regularly called for state intervention to protect them from market forces." In Adam Smith's day-and-age, the stewards of man were "merchants and manufacturers," the "principal architects" of state policy, manipulating their powerful positions to immiserate the majority of people with "dreadful misfortunes." Today, Adam Smith might recognize major transnational corporations and financial institutions, dominating the global economy, as playing a similar role. While most people have become more dependent on the external infrastructure of their cities and nation -- in the context of the developing welfare or nanny state -- these entities and individuals have prospered. (Chomsky)

The process dubbed the "Making of Economic Society" by Heilbroner, might also be seen as the economicization of human life, a stage setup around man with the props of industrialization and citification. but, to be sure, the process leading to the emergence of the market society, was a gradual one indeed, and certainly not predetermined to lead to the rise of American Capitalism as the center of the global economy and banner for economic freedom everywhere; for a time at least. Despite the clear indications that industrialization leads to centralization of wealth and power, "the slow evolution of the market system cannot be considered merely as the rise of a new mechanism of control," according to Heilbroner. "It must also be seen as the evolution of a new socio-economic organization of society, a new structure of law, of political organization, of social institutions, of ideas." (Heilbroner 222)

But the American Revolution, for all its seemingly sincere "inalienable rights," did seem to only enable a certain group of colonial elites to replace those loyal to England. There were certainly gains on the part of small landholders, but poor whites and tenant farmers were left very much in their old situation. Although scantily a popular one, what follows is an interpretation of the Constitution by early twentieth century historian Charles Beard: (Zinn 89)

Inasmuch as the primary object of the government, beyond the mere repression of physical violence, is the making of the rules which determine the property relations of members of society, the dominant classes whose rights are those to be determined must perforce obtain from the government such rules as are consonant with the larger interests necessary to the continuance of their economic processes, or they themselves must control the government.

To put it shortly, the rich must control the government for their own best interests, or at least control the laws by which the government operates. By studying the lives of the fifty-five men who drafted the Constitution at the Philadelphia Constitutional Convention of 1787, Beard came to certain conclusions about their ideologies and allegiances. Of the men at the convention, most were lawyers by profession, all were wealthy, in land, slaveowning, had interests in manufacturing, shipping, and half even had money loaned out at interest, while forty of the fifty-five held government bonds, according to the Treasury Department Records. It would be reasonable, then, to conclude that these men had direct economic interest in the development of the laws regulating a new nation.

Moreover, Beard was sure to make clear in his assessment, that he did not believe the Constitution was written solely for the gain of the Founding Fathers personally. The Constitution was not drafted merely to protect the $150,000 fortune of Benjamin Franklin, the slave-plantation of James Madison, the mammoth landholdings of George Washington (the richest man, perhaps, in the country). Instead, it was intended to serve as the foundation of lasting benefits afforded to the groups the Founders represented, like the affluent connections of Alexander Hamilton's father-in-law and brother-in-law. In Beard's estimation, the Founders represented the "economic interests they understood and felt in concrete, definite form through their own personal experience. He noted, not represented in the Constitutional Convention were the following groups: Slaves, indentured servants, women, and men without property. (Zinn 90)

The Revolution undoubtedly had economic implications and a class nature. Edmund Morgan summed it up: "the fact that lower ranks were involved in the contest should not obscure the fact that the contest itself was generally a struggle for office between members of an upper class: the new against the established." (Zinn 83) in agreement with Morgan's assessment, Carl Deger separately said, "no new social classes came to power through the door of the American revolution. The men who engineered the revolt were largely members of the colonial ruling class." (Zinn 84)

Determinably, when one considers the vast data available on the Revolution's impact on class relations, wealth, without much doubt, was clearly distributed "in such a way to give a double opportunity to the Revolutionary leaders." They did not miss their opportunity to enrich themselves and their cronies, while allocating small parcels to be tended by farmers "to create a broad base of support for the new government. Indeed this became characteristic of the… READ MORE

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