Capitalism and Me
I’ve been doing a bunch of reading on the history and nature of capitalism lately and will have more to say about the books and the underlying phenomena in due course. However, since I believe that most history (& other) writers’ personal connections to the issues they’re writing about color what and how they write, it would be good if they articulated those connections. As a result, I have spent some time thinking about capitalism and me.
By capitalism, I mean a culture (i.e., a socio-economic-epistemic system) in which we define ourselves and evaluate others and determine how to act across our lives principally from an economic perspective: morals are secondary to money (see Das Kapital, 102122). So, one need not have a net worth in excess of USD$1M to be a capitalist (although it helps). Capitalism is global, even if it engages with different cultures (Chinese, French, Nigerian) in different ways. The technologies of capitalism (e.g., corporations, global supply chains, leveraged buy-outs, 401(k) accounts, banks, the alienation of labor from products) are the superstructure or manifestations of this culture.
So, where do I fit in? I grew up in mid-20C America. The culture of capitalism/progress/success/ growth was rife. I grew up in an upper-middle class suburban environment where business concepts and financial mindsets were endemic. Long before I could spell “capitalism,” much less comprehend it, I was immersed in it. I was imbued with a (non-Protestant) work-ethic, and was given to understand that success meant replicating the bourgeois lifestyle (comforts, choices, and standard of living) which I knew quite well. I was taught to manage my weekly allowance and had a savings account and a couple of shares of stock before I was ten. In this sense, I have been a “capitalist” ever since; I invest my assets (both earned and inherited) with an eye on their financial return (i.e., I wanted to get richer).
I soon enough ran into the moral quandaries which capitalism necessitates, including racism, classism, and the importance of charity. Still, I didn’t have a clue as to how to reconcile them with the comfortable life I was living. I saw the situations of others, but even through college, I didn’t recognize their place in society as a necessary creation of the power structure which I seemed destined to inherit.
In college, I spent a summer as an intern at a big accounting firm. I learned a bunch about office life and business book-keeping. I didn’t need to learn the importance of keeping track of numbers and measuring things. I had already internalized them. I found a sense of security in being able to comprehend the world in tabular form. Its neatness made it easy not to pay attention to the complexities of life and feelings and moral trade-offs. For a while, I went down the rabbit-hole of calculating my life in dollars and cents (it was an era in which cents still mattered). I dug myself out of the worst of that hole and have been climbing out since, but the underlying mentalité remains.
As a lawyer in the corporate world of telecommunications and internet companies, I grew frustrated with the absence of morality in business dealings, the maximization of profit, and many individuals who, in the words of one colleague, conflated their net worth and their self-worth. My dislike of this environment was a significant factor in my decision to leave the corporate/legal world and go back to the academic world and history in particular.
As part of my studies, I wrestled with the large role capitalism and related topics played in modern European history. I also found a resonance between my own experience and what I came to understand as the psychological benefits to capitalists of having their world in order: a world that faced increasingly complexity and opportunity across the middle of the last millennium, a world—particularly in Europe—amid the epistemological chaos of reformation and secularization that was coming untethered from its former certainties. Profit and greed are hardly new factors in human affairs, but there is something more going on than just the quantity of trade or the technologies of markets and money-making that marks the shift to the modern mentalité, of which capitalism—both the mindset and the practices—are a major part.
There’s a psychological concept called the “ladder of development.” It’s a way to consider how well I tolerate complexity in other people and the world in general; or, in other words, how well I can maintain my own balance amid a world of difference and change. It’s an endless ladder, i.e., one can always do better; but it’s not a matter of judgmentalism, it’s more a matter of personal awareness and self-assessment. I suspect that my own experience and that of a broad swath of “capitalists” has to do with where I place myself on this ladder and my ability (and theirs) to cope with those challenges.
In other words, it’s easy for capitalists to comprehend the world because they simplify it; pushing moral complexities and self- assessment to the side. Facing decisions about whether to buy a car or fire an employee becomes much less stressful if I just ‘run the numbers’ and leave it at that. Adding in unquantifiable factors and externalities (e.g., the environment or the employee’s rent obligations) makes the decision harder.
There is a fundamental human psychological risk of projecting my own experience and mindset onto others. It comes up all the time and it is a trap into which I often fall. Just because I think I recognize (often subconsciously) some situation or attitude in someone else, it’s all too easy to think they’re just like me. It’s an especially common and dangerous risk in writing History. Not only is the past “a foreign country,” and people are often from other cultures, but the urge for story-telling, consistency, and familiarity can override the necessity for cogent and critical assessment of difference, and respect for that difference. So, it’s important to remember that my own self-assessment might (or might not) color my historical characterizations.
I’ve been doing a bunch of reading on the history and nature of capitalism lately and will have more to say about the books and the underlying phenomena in due course. However, since I believe that most history (& other) writers’ personal connections to the issues they’re writing about color what and how they write, it would be good if they articulated those connections. As a result, I have spent some time thinking about capitalism and me.
By capitalism, I mean a culture (i.e., a socio-economic-epistemic system) in which we define ourselves and evaluate others and determine how to act across our lives principally from an economic perspective: morals are secondary to money (see Das Kapital, 102122). So, one need not have a net worth in excess of USD$1M to be a capitalist (although it helps). Capitalism is global, even if it engages with different cultures (Chinese, French, Nigerian) in different ways. The technologies of capitalism (e.g., corporations, global supply chains, leveraged buy-outs, 401(k) accounts, banks, the alienation of labor from products) are the superstructure or manifestations of this culture.
So, where do I fit in? I grew up in mid-20C America. The culture of capitalism/progress/success/ growth was rife. I grew up in an upper-middle class suburban environment where business concepts and financial mindsets were endemic. Long before I could spell “capitalism,” much less comprehend it, I was immersed in it. I was imbued with a (non-Protestant) work-ethic, and was given to understand that success meant replicating the bourgeois lifestyle (comforts, choices, and standard of living) which I knew quite well. I was taught to manage my weekly allowance and had a savings account and a couple of shares of stock before I was ten. In this sense, I have been a “capitalist” ever since; I invest my assets (both earned and inherited) with an eye on their financial return (i.e., I wanted to get richer).
I soon enough ran into the moral quandaries which capitalism necessitates, including racism, classism, and the importance of charity. Still, I didn’t have a clue as to how to reconcile them with the comfortable life I was living. I saw the situations of others, but even through college, I didn’t recognize their place in society as a necessary creation of the power structure which I seemed destined to inherit.
In college, I spent a summer as an intern at a big accounting firm. I learned a bunch about office life and business book-keeping. I didn’t need to learn the importance of keeping track of numbers and measuring things. I had already internalized them. I found a sense of security in being able to comprehend the world in tabular form. Its neatness made it easy not to pay attention to the complexities of life and feelings and moral trade-offs. For a while, I went down the rabbit-hole of calculating my life in dollars and cents (it was an era in which cents still mattered). I dug myself out of the worst of that hole and have been climbing out since, but the underlying mentalité remains.
As a lawyer in the corporate world of telecommunications and internet companies, I grew frustrated with the absence of morality in business dealings, the maximization of profit, and many individuals who, in the words of one colleague, conflated their net worth and their self-worth. My dislike of this environment was a significant factor in my decision to leave the corporate/legal world and go back to the academic world and history in particular.
As part of my studies, I wrestled with the large role capitalism and related topics played in modern European history. I also found a resonance between my own experience and what I came to understand as the psychological benefits to capitalists of having their world in order: a world that faced increasingly complexity and opportunity across the middle of the last millennium, a world—particularly in Europe—amid the epistemological chaos of reformation and secularization that was coming untethered from its former certainties. Profit and greed are hardly new factors in human affairs, but there is something more going on than just the quantity of trade or the technologies of markets and money-making that marks the shift to the modern mentalité, of which capitalism—both the mindset and the practices—are a major part.
There’s a psychological concept called the “ladder of development.” It’s a way to consider how well I tolerate complexity in other people and the world in general; or, in other words, how well I can maintain my own balance amid a world of difference and change. It’s an endless ladder, i.e., one can always do better; but it’s not a matter of judgmentalism, it’s more a matter of personal awareness and self-assessment. I suspect that my own experience and that of a broad swath of “capitalists” has to do with where I place myself on this ladder and my ability (and theirs) to cope with those challenges.
In other words, it’s easy for capitalists to comprehend the world because they simplify it; pushing moral complexities and self- assessment to the side. Facing decisions about whether to buy a car or fire an employee becomes much less stressful if I just ‘run the numbers’ and leave it at that. Adding in unquantifiable factors and externalities (e.g., the environment or the employee’s rent obligations) makes the decision harder.
There is a fundamental human psychological risk of projecting my own experience and mindset onto others. It comes up all the time and it is a trap into which I often fall. Just because I think I recognize (often subconsciously) some situation or attitude in someone else, it’s all too easy to think they’re just like me. It’s an especially common and dangerous risk in writing History. Not only is the past “a foreign country,” and people are often from other cultures, but the urge for story-telling, consistency, and familiarity can override the necessity for cogent and critical assessment of difference, and respect for that difference. So, it’s important to remember that my own self-assessment might (or might not) color my historical characterizations.
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