Ryan Schram

Mills 169 (A26)

ryan.schram@sydney.edu.au

Monday, August 22, 2016

Available at: http://anthro.rschram.org/1002/5.1

Marx offers us a theory of capitalism as a product of history. Marx's ultimate goal was to predict what would happen to capitalism, and what ultimately would lead to its demise. He argued that capitalism, like any social system, is defined by contradictions, and these would eventually overwhelm the system. Arguably, this has helped scholars to understand how capitalism has changed in the 20th century.

• Standardization of processes, specialization and regimentation of workers
• High wages and high employment and cooperation between capital and labor
• Centralization of all aspects of production in one firm
• Mass production for a mass market

Fordism was the model for production in both socialist and capitalist economies.

• Many different, small firms involved in each aspect of production
• Flexibility, rapid change in production processes
• Precarious labor, greater competition among workers, and hence lower wages
• Specialized production for many niche markets

As capitalism ascends over socialism, capital also puts pressure on states to liberalize trade and investment across borders, so that it may invest in cheaper processes (or offshore and outsource some aspects of production to places with lower wages). Production as well as consumption is globalized, and this requires new methods of production which are more “flexible.” A post-Fordist model is born: Lots of little shops competing for a number of different small jobs for big companies.

The globalization of capitalism does not mean that once isolated societies become integrated into a single global system. We have already seen how gift systems adapt to their contact with global markets. Global capitalist firms and the global system as a whole also depends on the maintenance of this alternative as a means of reproducing labor it can exploit.

• Maimafu villagers will never be able to earn enough from coffee; Campos needs Maimafu to keep growing sweet potato
• At the Signature Fashions factory, workers need to be willing and able to change jobs and hours fast. The firm depends on them having side jobs and being generally familiar with all the jobs at the factory. That means it depends on having workers who help each other make extra clothes for each other.

One of the ways societies respond to market forces is by placing limits on individual choices

• Wamira (Papua New Guinea) taro gardens can't be tended with metal tools (Kahn 1986)
• When Luo (Kenya) people sell land, they earn “bitter money” (Shipton 1989)

Market-driven societies also place some kind of moral limit on profit as well

• Human tissue cannot be sold in Australia
• Prostitution is illegal in the United States, except Nevada

Certain kinds of value remain embedded in social relationships while other kinds are able to be commodified, bought and sold. Is M-C-M' itself immoral?

We can apply the same kind of thinking to the relationship of wage labor, which is based on exploitation. Workers often find ways to collectively resist the extraction of surplus value

• Cleaning one's wool-spinning machine promptly at the end of a shift - a clean machine usually doesn't get turned on again until tomorrow (Shehata 2009, 68)
• Breaking machine counters, which meant that operators and not supervisors had to determine when a machine's spindles were completely full and could be replaced (Shehata 2009, 69)

Many of these and similar tactics were also used by workers in socialist firms so that they could subvert the control of managers.

Of course, from another perspective, resisting control of labor or limiting market forces are bad for moral reasons:

• Peasants are lazy; they only produce what they need
• Factory workers are irresponsible; they don't care if the compant meets its quotas
• Indigenous people are backward; they think their territory is more valuable than having enough food.
• Workers who “thief” time and material are stealing, and stealing is immoral (Prentice 2015, 95)!
  Do mass production and production for the market have their own morality? Where does it come from?

An either-or distinction is a dichotomy.

An opposition between individual self-interest and the collective force of a social norm, like reciprocity, is one example of dichotomous classification.

Many societies see their own involvement in markets in terms of this dichotomy. Their ideology focuses on the dilemma - a choice between opposed ends - posed by trading: Do I earn for myself or give help to my neighbors and kin?

• Making gin in Frafra slums
• Selling betel nut around PNG
• Selling tobacco in Auhelawa

Kahn, Miriam. 1986. Always Hungry, Never Greedy: Food and the Expression of Gender in a Melanesian Society. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Prentice, Rebecca. 2015. “'Is We Own Factory:' Thiefing a Chance on the Shop Floor.” In Thiefing a Chance: Factory Work, Illicit Labor, and Neoliberal Subjectivities in Trinidad, 87–110. Boulder, Colo.: University Press of Colorado.

Shehata, Samer S. 2009. Shop Floor Culture and Politics in Egypt. Albany, N.Y.: SUNY Press.

Shipton, Parker. 1989. Bitter Money: Cultural Economy and Some African Meanings of Forbidden Commodities. Washington, D.C.: American Anthropological Association.