Blog on Capitalism

Exploring the Nature of Capitalism

In the last post, we described how capitalism gained its evangelical force.

In this post we describe the lot of ‘The Poor’ during the 18th and 19th centuries, and the ways in which, finally, they gained a foothold into the ‘lower middle classes’ of the West.

In the process, Western Europeans transferred their attitudes toward the wastelands of ‘The Poor’ in western Europe, to the wastelands of their newly acquired colonies and ‘protectorates’.

Those who live inside the bubble of capitalism have commonly seen anything outside that bubble as wasteland; regions which are out of control, dangerous, and in need of civilisation; in the words of William Booth, founder of  The Salvation Army, in need of ‘Soup, Soap and Salvation’.

They have, all-too-often, viewed those regions as impoverished, ignorant, superstitious and corrupt, subject to the control of  capricious chiefs, dictators, war-lords,gangsters and reprobates.

They are regions in need of the light of civilisation and the Gospel, development and democracy, of human rights and law and order.

 They are regions within which Western humanitarian effort must be focused.

And this all began in the the 18th and 19th centuries when Western Europeans finally made a concerted effort to reclaim the wastelands of  The West.

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Exploring the Nature of Capitalism

This is the 3rd post on the nature of capitalism. The previous post ‘ The Historical Emergence of Capitalism‘ traced the experiences of western Europeans which led to capitalism. It finished in the 18th century, with Adam Smith’s outline of a new environment – the economy.

Here we pick up the threads in the early 18th century and describe how capitalism received its evangelical force.

By the start of the 18th century, Britain, with most of the rest of western Europe to one extent or another, had in place all the necessary understandings, motivations and organisational processes and practices which would produce both the discipline of economics and the ‘industrial revolution’. What it lacked, was a deep religious commitment to capitalism.

Those who held the political and economic reins increasingly confused money-making and religious ideals. More and more of them justified themselves through involvement in money-making activities and the churches, which had been so strong in the 17th century, found it difficult to attract and hold members. 

With weak attachment to religion, the religious morality which had constrained capitalist behaviour in the previous century lost a great deal of its force.  The drive to industry and frugality was seriously weakened as the money-makers and their allies gained political power and used it to enrich themselves.

Freed from moral considerations, their earthly-minded materialism, self-satisfied complacency and self-interest allowed them to engage in predatory behaviour toward the weak and vulnerable in society.  With little compunction, they stripped the livelihoods and entitlements from more than half the population, leaving them dispossessed and impoverished. 

Thomas Jefferson, in 1787, gave his opinion of what he found in 18th century Europe:

…they have divided their nations into two classes, wolves and sheep. I do not exaggerate. This is a true picture of Europe. …man is the only animal which devours his own kind; for I can apply no milder term to the governments of Europe, and to the general prey of the rich on the poor.

Yet there was no ‘revolution of the proletariat’. Instead, by the end of the century, Capitalism was poised to remake the world in its image. How on earth did this happen?

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Exploring the Nature of Capitalism

Following on from the first post, this post explores the historical conditions in western Europe which led to the emergence of capitalism. This is an exploration of how some of the most basic presumptions which underpin Western understandings of life have been shaped by history, becoming seen as features of the real world, the unfocused backdrop to secondary ideological disputes. The issues examined include:

• the ways in which ‘the economy’ became separated from other ‘environments’ in Western thinking;
• the emergence of an emphasis on ‘market exchange’ as the ‘correct’ form of exchange between individuals and groups;
• the reasons why formal economies are so strongly bound by legal frames and supported by both legal and fiscal bureaucracies;
• the nature of ‘consumerism’ and its historical underpinnings;
• and why those who became committed to Western ideologies became so missionary-oriented, focused on the material world and convinced of the need for the whole world to be organised according to their ideological understanding.
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Exploring the Nature of Capitalism

It’s time we, living in capitalist countries, got ourselves into perspective.

Over the past century, people living in Western (capitalist) countries have increasingly imposed their understanding of reality on others. Now, they are becoming aware of  a growing antipathy toward ‘The West’ around the world. Henry Hyde’s view of  the problems facing Western countries (US House of Representatives Committee on International Relations October 3 2001) is not isolated,

Let us begin by accepting there is no single enemy to be defeated, no one network to be eliminated. Al-Qa’eda is but our most prominent opponent, but its outlook is shared by many others who are equally committed to our destruction… we know now that we have permanent, mortal enemies who will seize upon our vulnerabilities to bloody us, to murder our citizens, to commit horror for the purpose of forcing horror upon us…

 For the past 8 years the West has confronted what it perceives as a growing ‘climate of terror’ around the world. While estimates vary, it is reasonable to say that thousands of lives have been lost and billions of dollars have been spent in pursuing, capturing and killing those deemed a threat to the security of Western nations.

It is time to take stock. Before continuing to pursue phantoms and shoot at shadows (and, in the process, alienate thousands caught in the crossfire) we need to understand what is producing this apparently burgeoning antipathy toward Western capitalist countries. 

Western capitalist nations, over the past century, have attempted to re-organise the world to reflect their understanding of reality. Although we often fail to recognise it, this requires a far-reaching reorganisation of people’s lives in non-Western countries. It would be surprising if there was not, sooner or later, a reaction against such activity. So, what impact does this attempt to reorganise the world have on people living in non-Western regions of the world?

Human beings (including members of Western capitalist nations) believe that they interact with ‘objective reality’, that is, a reality that exists independently of themselves and is perceived in the same way by all human beings. In every community, models are built from that assumed objective reality which, in the opinion of those who order their lives by them, provide the best ways of organising life to make the most of the reality in which they live.

Of course, although the raw materials from which perceived reality is constructed are ‘out there’, nobody actually perceives them as ‘they really are’. We all filter our perceptions through sets of models which order that unstructured ‘reality’. And the models used to structure reality are, like language, constructed over time within communities.

Like language, each community has its own set of models, built through history, and believes that the models it perpetuates are ‘objective reality’ and so are universally held by all human beings. Because these models are fundamental to conceptualising reality and those who hold them have been immersed in the reality structured through them since birth, their existence is not even recognised by community members. This, again, is very similar to our experience with language.

 Very few people are able to focus on, let alone describe, the models which structure their language. Even fewer are able to focus on the models which structure reality because they are required in order to think, and so form the bed rock of human understanding. To challenge those models, is to challenge all the understandings which people have taken for granted throughout their lives.

When people in other communities are subjected to Western capitalist demands for change, based on very different presumptions about ‘objective reality’,  their understanding of their environment and of themselves in terms of their environment decreasingly ‘makes sense’. They lose their sense of identity and self-worth as their indigenous status and prestige systems break down and brutality, despotism and corruption escalate in their communities.

Over time, people begin to realise that the problems they face and the disorientation they experience are connected to Western activity within their regions. Inevitably anti-Western sentiment grows… Read more:
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