The most controversial portion of the Graeber article mentioned in a previous post is his claim that there are structural similarities between slavery and modern capitalism. He enumerates several: “Both rely on a separation of the place of social (re)production of the labor force, and the . . . . Continue Reading »
Marx has many dimensions, but the humanist one is not typically noted. In his ethnographic notebooks, he writes this about ancient conceptions of wealth: “Among the ancients we discover no single inquiry as to which form of landed property etc. is the most productive, which creates maximum . . . . Continue Reading »
Mary Douglas and Baron Isherwood wrote The World of Goods out of exasperation with the limited view of consumption that has dominated discussions, the “tendency to suppose that people buy goods for two or three restricted purposes: material welfare, psychic welfare, and display. The first two . . . . Continue Reading »
In an essay on Mauss’ The Gift: The Form and Reason for Exchange in Archaic Societies in Risk and Blame: Essays in Cultural Theory , Mary Douglas makes an intriguing comparison between Mauss and Adam Smith: Mauss “discovered a mechanism by which individual interests combine to make a . . . . Continue Reading »
Gill again, stating the obvious: “Neither those who dominate and lead our industrialism - that is our bankers and financiers - nor those thousands and millions of men and women who are its more or less irresponsible instruments - neither, that is to say, the masters nor the men, are moved, . . . . Continue Reading »
In his 1939 lecture on Sacred and Secular in Art and Industry , Eric Gill compared the artist and the modern industrial laborer. They have much in common: “Both are normally engaged in making things. Both are normally workers with their hands. Both are normally paid for what they do and not . . . . Continue Reading »
Joyce Appleby’s Economic Thought and Ideology in Seventeenth-Century England has a forbiddingly monographic title, but don’t be put off. It’s a profound meditation on the earliest construction of modern economic theory, an attempt to explain “how the market becomes central . . . . Continue Reading »
Gellner provides a stimulating description of the interconnection of economic, political, cultural, and intellectual components of “industrial society,” which for him is a virtual equivalent of “modern society.” He begins with the Weberian description of modern society as a . . . . Continue Reading »
Specialization and division of labor is often seen as one of the marks of modern society. Ernest Gellner ( Nations and Nationalism (New Perspectives on the Past) ) notes that the situation is more complicated. There are, he observes, specialists in complex agrarian societies (like medieval Europe), . . . . Continue Reading »
A recent issue of the New Yorker had an intriguing profile of Paypal founder Peter Thiel. Thiel’s current obsession is education” “Thiel believes that education is the next bubble in the U.S. economy. He has compared university administrators to subprime-mortgage brokers, and . . . . Continue Reading »
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