Modernity and Globalisation

1. Modernity and Globalisation Gurminder K. Bhambra

2. Industrial Capitalism and the Protestant Ethic Week 5

3. Overview • The Enlightenment and stadial history • Understanding commercial society • The transition from commercial to industrial • What characterizes industrial society? • Weber and industrial capitalism

4. The Enlightenment: Background • The ‘Age of Reason’: reason replaced tradition as key source of legitimacy • Associated primarily with European philosophy in the late 17th / 18th Centuries • Roots in Renaissance Humanism, the Scientific Revolution, and the Reformation • Key thinkers: Hobbes, Newton, Locke, Hume, Smith, Ferguson, Montesquieu, Rousseau, Voltaire, Wollstonecraft, Kant

5. The Enlightenment: Key Features • Science: replaces religion as the dominant framework for intellectual thought • The individual: human beings at the centre of intellectual inquiry • Reason: belief in the ‘unity’ of reason leads to the emergence of ‘natural law’ and ‘rights’; reason is a capacity, not necessarily an active skill • Universal standards: all ‘men’ possess reason and as a consequence can agree • Progress: humanity forms a universal whole at different stages of development; change is seen as developmental and not just dynamic

6. Kant: ‘What is Enlightenment?’ (1784) “Enlightenment is man's emergence from his self-imposed immaturity. Immaturity is the inability to use one's understanding without guidance from another. This immaturity is self-imposed when its cause lies not in lack of understanding, but in lack of resolve and courage to use it without guidance from another. SapereAude! [dare to know] “Have courage to use your own understanding!” - that is the motto of Enlightenment.”

7. The Scottish Enlightenment • 18th century, after the Act of Union (1707) • David Hume (philosopher), Adam Smith (economics), Adam Ferguson (sociology) • Key themes: morality, toleration, the market, wealth and well-being, poverty and the possible undermining of virtue in market/ commercial society • Critiquing universal ideas of morality and seeking to inaugurate an empirical understanding of morality in context: stadial theory

8. Stadial Theory • The ‘stages theory of history’ is based on the idea that societies undergo developmentthrough successive stagesbased on different modes of subsistence • Four stages of societies: • hunting and gathering • pastoral (e.g. herding of cattle, sheep) • settled agriculture • commercial

9. Stadial Theory • These stages were seen as consecutive and evolutionary, and culminating in the ultimate stage of commercial society • Different societies were at different ‘stages’ of ‘development’ • travelling across space also meant travelling back in time, where the ‘others’ encountered were earlier versions of themselves • The reason for the differences between ‘civilised’ societies and others: • the mode of subsistence was the key factor in socio-economic development

10. Focus on Commerce • Growth of commercial activities led to attempts to understand the significance of commerce, and its causal conditions • Increase in population and urban areas • Improved communications between cities, with the development of roads, railways, and canals • The increased economic activity of the 18th century was not stimulated by technological changes nor the introduction of factories, but rather the expansion of markets, both at home, but more importantly, abroad

11. Smith: the civility of economics • The market: expression of individual freedom to enter into economic contracts of their choice • The division of labour and the growth of commodity exchange: accumulation of ‘movable wealth’, money • Money: could be saved, as insurance against an uncertain future; invested in property or in manufacturing and industrial enterprises; or used to buy the labour of others • The vindication of commercial society rested in the accumulation and distribution of wealth across classes, such that all members of society were able to enjoy a better standard of living

12. Hume: ‘Of Refinement in the Arts’ (1752) • A civilized society, according to Hume (1752) was one in which property was secure, industry encouraged, and in which the arts were able to flourish “They flock into the cities; love to receive and communicate knowledge; to show their wit or their breeding; their taste in conversation or living, in clothes or furniture. Curiosity allures the wise; vanity the foolish; and pleasure both. Particular clubs and societies are everywhere formed: both sexes meet in an easy and sociable manner; and the tempers of men, as well as their behaviour, refine apace. So that … it is impossible but they must feel an increase of humanity, from the very habit of conversing together, and contributing to each other’s pleasure and entertainment. Thus industry, knowledge and humanity are linked together … and are found, from experience as well as reason, to be peculiar to the more polished, and, … the more luxurious ages.”

13. Commercial to Industrial Society • Stadial theory placed commercial society at its apex while allowing for the co-existence of different stages alongside this presumed ‘end-stage’ • no necessary impetus for moving from one stage to another, or any responsibility for such transformation • Commercial society was never fully differentiated as a system from what had previously existed in any large scale trading empire • The identification of the unique characteristics of commercial society was designed to encourage good governance and moral certitude rather than to identify an ‘unbound Prometheus’ • that is, an innate characteristic which, in its diffusion outwards, gives rise to its supplanting of other forms of society

14. Industrial Society • The transformation of Europe into a capitalist world-economy as a consequence of processes of industrialisation • the mechanization of the textile industry • the emergence of new technologies of coal and iron • introduction of steam power • the transformation of agrarian social relations • Followed by the subsequent incorporation of external non-capitalist systems • The singularity of the process – the expansion outwards from an initial core that is European – is agreed upon in both standard accounts of industrialization as well the Marxist ones

15. The Logic of Industrialism • The distinction between modern commerce and earlier commercial forms was a ‘principle’ that guaranteed the dominance of the new society • The principle of transformation was technological development through market competition, and/ or, class struggle • In this way, the ‘cosmopolitanism’ of commercial society gave way to the evolutionary teleology of industrial capitalism and modernization theory

16. Industrial Capitalism • As a negative, but necessary, stage in human history (Marx) • A temporary disruption of the bonds of community, which could be restored in new forms of solidarity based upon the interdependence evident in the advanced division of labour (Durkheim) • An ever tightening constraint on human creativity (Weber)

17. Industrial Capitalism and Weber • Weber is interested in the relationship between economic structures and other forms of social organisation • He has interests in the operations of the stock exchange, and particularly the problems of the regulation of the stock exchange, the increasing commercialisation of agriculture, wage-labour, and the emerging ‘economic individualism’

18. The Protestant Ethic • Centres of capitalist development are overwhelmingly Protestant • The Reformation • The ‘calling’ or vocation • Rationalization of mystical contemplation

19. The Spirit of Capitalism • Capitalism is identical with the pursuit of (renewed) profit • Capitalist economic action: the expectation of profit by the utilization of opportunities for exchange • Peculiarity of Western capitalism: • rational industrial organisation attuned to a regular market • separation of business from the household • rational book-keeping • organisation of free labour

20. Questions • What is a ‘calling’ and what is its relationship to understanding capitalism? • What is the relationship between ‘the spirit of capitalism’ and the ‘capitalist order’? • What is ‘traditionalism’? Give examples. • Why is rationalisation important to the emergence of capitalism?