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Chapter Two: The Laborer in the Culture of Capitalism
By many poor men that work early and late; If it were not for them
that do our labor full hard
We might go and hang ourselves without regard. . . .
By these people’s labor we fill our purse.
If trading grows dead, we will presently show it,
But if it grows good, they shall never know it (seventeenth-century labor song).
—Fernand Braudel, The
Wheels of Commerce
The capitalist system makes it very much easier for people not to
realize
what they are doing, not to know about the danger and hardship, the
despair and humiliation, that their way of life implies for others.
—Edmund Wilson, The Shores of Light
The consumer may drive the culture of
capitalism, but without the laborer there would be no commodities to consume. Yet the
emergence of the laborer—the person who survives by selling labor—is a recent
historical phenomenon. In past centuries most people had access to land on which to grow
their own food, selling whatever surplus they produced. Or they owned
tools—implements for weaving, metalworking, or producing other objects for sale or
trade. Thus to understand capitalism it is necessary to examine why people choose or are
forced to sell their labor. Before beginning this examination it is necessary to have a
fundamental understanding of the workings of the capitalist economy.
Capitalism is not an easy term
to define. Pierre Proudhon, who first used it in 1861, called it "an economic and
social regime in which capital, the source of income, does not generally belong to those
who make it work through their labor" (cited Braudel 1982:237). The term capitalism
does not appear in the writings of Karl Marx and did not gain currency until 1902, when
the German economist Werner Sombart used it to denote the opposite of socialism. But
definitions alone won’t help us to understand fully the dynamics of something as
complex as a capitalist economy. We need to understand the major characteristics of
capitalism to appreciate how as an economic and a cultural system it has permeated our
lives
Few people will deny that the genius of capitalism
lies in its ability to produce goods—commodities for people to buy and consume.
Let’s start our excursion into capitalism with a product, beginning with something
nearly all of us buy at one point or another—sneakers—and examine, briefly, the
largest manufacturer of sneakers, Nike, Inc. Today most of the sneakers—and
clothes—we wear are assembled overseas because large corporations, such as Nike, have
increasingly relocated assembly factories from their home countries to countries on the
periphery. Consequently the clothes we wear; the TVs, stereos, and compact disks (CDs) we
listen to; and the computers we use are at least partly produced by a person in another
part of the world. This situation creates a clash of cultures that can be illuminating for
what they tell us about other cultures and what they may tell us about ourselves. The
effects that these factories have on other countries highlight the distinctive features of
the capitalist economy and perhaps approximate the impact of early capitalism on our own
society. But first let us digress briefly to an understanding of the economic logic of
capitalism and particularly the role of labor within this economic system.
Click here to go to the
introduction to Chapter Three
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