Capitalism (Anthropology)

Introduction

The study of capitalism covers a wide range of issues from the economic to the civilizational which can easily overwhelm the scholar. For the purposes of clarity capitalism is best defined as an economic system based on private ownership of the means of production and in which goods and services are freely exchanged by means of the market mechanism. It can be contrasted to various models of “state socialism” in which the means of production are collectively owned either through the state or in a cooperative relationship at the plant level and in which economic production and exchange are centrally planned and controlled. It is also to be distinguished from “market socialism” which is a hybrid economic system in which critical areas of the economy, especially finance and core production functions, are collectively owned by the state but a large range of consumer enterprises are privatized allowing market exchange to play a major role in economic transactions albeit within a framework of selective central planning and administrative oversight and regulation. The outstanding case of a capitalist economy today is the United States; the classical case of “state socialism” was the Soviet Union; and the best current example of “market socialism” is the Chinese economy. Given the vital issues of human development, political freedom, and ideology which are involved, these distinctions are highly controversial and contested. For example, there is an ongoing debate as to whether China is to be understood as a market socialist economy or simply a capitalist economy with a veneer of socialist rhetoric and an authoritarian political structure. Notwithstanding these debates which cannot be avoided, the distinctions made above offer a useful point of departure to embark on the study of capitalism in an organized and logically coherent fashion. While focusing on the core economic aspects, this article attempts to cover the central cultural issues which would most interest anthropologists. It discusses the critical “peasant question” which occupied anthropological debates in the 1970s; the relationship between capitalism, development, and neoliberal globalization as well as the problem of capitalism and alienation, race, and the increasingly important study of place and space. Finally, toward the end, selections of some of the main studies which address the critical issue of money and the alternatives to capitalism are brought to the reader’s attention.

General Theories

General theories of capitalist society are many but the main ones are the following: First there are the works of the classical economists of which Wealth of Nations (Smith 1977) is the most important and still highly relevant example. Second are the theories of capitalism which arise from the work of Karl Marx in Marx 1992. Marx develops his famous labor theory of value in which, in contrast to Smith, labor power rather than labor is the source of exchange value and its exploitation in the labor process is the source of surplus value. The third group of theories is those derived from marginal utility theory which, influenced by Bentham’s utilitarianism, developed toward the latter part of the 19th century and which are best represented in the work of Alfred Marshall in Marshall 2009. This is the source of modern day micro-economics and neo-classical theory which looks at the economy principally from the point of view of maximizing the interests of the individual consumer or firm. Fourthly, there is Keynesianism in Keynes 2007. Influenced by Cambridge aestheticism, Keynes in effect transforms the individualist perspective of the marginalists into a social utility in which social consumption and aggregate demand play a pivotal role. The issue now is how to stabilize the capitalist system as a whole in such a manner that the cycles of boom and bust are evened out. The final group of works stress the cultural consequences of capitalism—of particular importance for anthropologists. The two preeminent books here are Durkheim 1997 (Division of Labor in Society) and Weber 1978 (Protestant Ethic). Durkheim, influenced by 19th century thinkers like Herbert Spencer as well as by Henry Maine, argues that capitalism produces a potential for a new form of social solidarity (“organic”) which is based on the mutual interdependence of differentiated social institutions. Giddens 1971, drawing on the Durkheimian tradition, presents a synthetic summary of contemporary capitalism in which the potential for capitalism to be stabilized by normative reforms is emphasized. In contrast to this basically optimistic view of the political-cultural future of capitalism, Max Weber presents a pessimistic and ironic narrative of a system which, having been originally inspired by a deep-seated sense of individual ethical commitment, now finds itself descending into an iron cage of bureaucracy which threatens to stifle all liberal and human values. Here one can detect that tragic sense of resignation and alienation which some characterize as “modernist” and a hallmark of late capitalist culture—public, private, and aesthetic—in the 20th and 21st centuries.

Durkheim, Émile. 1997. The division of labor in society. New York: Free Press.
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The original analysis on the development of modern capitalist society and culture as a movement from “mechanical” to “organic” solidarity. Emphasis is on the normative changes produced by institutional differentiation and on the new possibilities created for social and cultural integration on a rationalistic basis. A basically optimistic view of the possibility of social reforms creating a stable capitalist society and an extremely influential work in the development of structural-functionalism in anthropology and “structuration” in sociological theory.
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Giddens, Anthony. 1971. Capitalism and modern social theory: An analysis of the writings of Marx, Durkheim, Weber. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge Univ. Press.
DOI: 10.1017/CBO9780511803109Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
The most thorough modern analysis of capitalism from a Durkheimian sociological viewpoint. This highly influential work laid the foundation for what went on to become “structuration theory” in sociology.
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Keynes, John Maynard. 2007. The general theory of employment, interest and money. London: Macmillan.
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The basic economic theory of managing and stabilizing advanced capitalism in a period of economic crisis by judicious use of a publicly financed stimulus. The economic foundation of the social democratic welfare state and macroeconomic policy management. Somewhat technical but essential reading to understand debates on policy in contemporary capitalism.
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Marshall, Alfred. 2009. Principles of economics. New York: Cosimo.
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The fundamental work by one of the founders of neo-classical economics. Outlines key concepts of the “marginalist revolution” such as “opportunity cost.” Essential reading to understand contemporary neo-capitalist economics.
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Marx, Karl. 1992. Capital: A critique of political economy, Volume 1. Translated by Ben Fowkes. London: Penguin.
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The classic work on the structure/logic of capitalism and the labor process in capitalism, and one which has been used as the starting point for theorizing capitalism for Marxists since its publication in 1867.
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Smith, Adam. 1977. An inquiry into the nature and causes of the wealth of nations. Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press.
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The classical account of the development of the division of labor and the market and the rise of capitalist society. Extremely readable and a much more complex argument about the importance of a role for the state, especially in education, than is often realized. The foundation for modern neo-classical economics. Essential reading.
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Weber, Max. 1978. The Protestant ethic and the spirit of capitalism. Los Angeles: Univ. of California Press.
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Weber’s classic work which sets out his thesis of the origins of capitalism in the ethical orientations of particular status groups. A critique of the Marxist approach in which Weberian political sociology and market orientation are combined in a powerful work.
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Origins of Capitalism

Of equal importance is the debate about the origins of capitalism in Europe—usually glossed as the Brenner Debate. Aston and Philpin 1987 brings together the main papers in this crucial debate. Brenner 1976 is worth singling out as the statement which sparked the debate. He argues that capitalism had an agrarian, not a mercantile or manufacturing, origin, arising out of the internal contradictions of feudalism especially through a political process of class struggle. Dobb 1946 had previously analyzed the issues but his account differed from Brenner in so far as it stresses more the role of merchant capital and places less emphasis on political agency. Le Roy Ladurie 1974, analyzing French experience, attributes the rise of capitalism to demographic factors. Postan 1975 on the other hand argued that population changes in interaction with price movements played the major role. Braudel 1984, presents an eclectic view which, in contrast to the approaches taken in the Brenner debate, is more empirical than theoretical. In an account influenced by Levi-Straussian structuralism and the concept of the longue durée, capitalism emerges only very slowly from pre-capitalist societies and is neither characterized by Weberian Protestant piety nor an emphasis on the market. On the contrary capitalism arises first in the Catholic south around the Meditteranean basin, is based on state rather than market controls, and is a result of the interaction of many factors—cultural, political, social, and economic.

Aston, T., and C. H. E. Philpin. 1987. The Brenner debate: Agrarian class structure and economic development in pre-industrial Europe. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge Univ. Press.
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The collection of papers on the famous debate on the origins of capitalism in northern Europe.
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Braudel, Fernand. 1984. Civilization and capitalism, 15th–18th century. Vols. 1–3. New York: Harper & Row.
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A broad civilizational view of capitalism which emphasizes its southern European, Catholic, and mercantile roots in contrast to the literature which locates capitalist origins in northern European agrarian society.
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Brenner, Robert. 1976. Agrarian class structure and economic development in pre-industrial Europe. Past & Present 70:30–75.
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A seminal Marxist formulation which sees the emergence of European capitalism arising out of the agency of political struggles and economic contradictions within feudal agrarian society.
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Dobb, Maurice. 1946. Studies in the development of capitalism. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul.
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Early Marxist formulation which gives equal weight to the role of merchant capital and agrarian processes in the emergence of capitalism in Europe.
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Le Roy Ladurie, Emmanuel. 1974. The peasants of Languedoc. Urbana: Univ. of Illinois Press.
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A Malthusian approach which emphasizes demographic factors as the cause of capitalism’s rise.
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Postan, M. M. 1975. The medieval economy and society. Harmondsworth, UK: Penguin.
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Rise and fall of population and prices are presented as the principal factors explaining the origins of European capitalism.
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The Peasant Question

Much of the literature on the peasantry, or “agrarian society” as Bernstein and Byres 2002 formulates it, has focused on the issue of whether and how capitalism has developed in the countryside. This is the famous “Lenin-Chayanov Debate” which raged in the literature in the 1960s and 1970s, especially in the pages of The Journal of Peasant Studies and which still surfaces in analyses today, such as in Brass 2000. In Lenin’s The Development of Capitalism in Russia (Lenin 1978), he argued that, contrary to the view of the populists, capitalism was developing in the Russian countryside as much as it had developed in the towns, albeit more slowly and by circuitous routes. For Lenin, the “peasantry” was therefore far from being a homogenous social category but was differentiating into “poor” peasants and an immiserated rural proletariat at one extreme and a class of rich capitalist “kulaks” at the other, with a large number of “middle” peasants in-between. The political implications of such an analysis from the socialist viewpoint were clear: the policy should be to mobilize the poor peasants against the rich and to win over the wavering middle peasants to the socialist side. A distorted version of this policy was pursued with brutal simplicity by Stalin during the collectivization period in Russia after 1928. Chayanov 1966, coming from the populist political tendency, vigorously denied that such a process of class differentiation was proceeding in the countryside and argued that the peasantry was a unified and self-sustaining social category following its own developmental laws. Brass 2000 is a modern review of the issues and an affirmation of the Leninist position. Shenton and Lennihan 1981 is an empirical application of Lenin’s thesis to northern Nigeria. Roseberry 1983 is a historical treatment of the subordination and proletarianization of a section of the Venezuelan peasantry to an expanding capitalist coffee plantation system. Silverman 1979 provides a balanced review of the anthropological literature without taking sides, while Bernstein 2009 is the latest overview of this perennial debate. Wolf 1969 takes a different tack considering the political consequences of peasant marginalization by capitalism. In considering this literature it is important to be sensitive to the extremely serious political consequences which followed from one view or the other not simply for debates about Russian development but for the prospect for popular rural political action worldwide, in the developing world in particular. In the 1960s and 1970s, at the height of the Cold War, after the Chinese revolution and during the Vietnamese War, as well as in the course of leftwing political movements in other parts of Asia as well as in Latin America, Africa, and the Middle East, this became an urgent strategic political question of the highest practical importance which is why the academic debate on the economic issues became so intense and at times acrimonious.

Bernstein, Henry. 2009. V. I. Lenin and A. V. Chayanov: Looking back, looking forward. The Journal of Peasant Studies 36.1: 55–81.
DOI: 10.1080/03066150902820289Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
The most recent survey of the Lenin-Chayanov debate.
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Bernstein, Henry, and Terence Byres. 2002. From peasant studies to agrarian chance. Journal of Agrarian Change 1.1: 1–56.
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A review of the output of the Journal of Peasant Studies over the years and a justification for the shift to the concept of agrarian society and agrarian studies.
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Brass, Tom. 2000. Peasants, populism and postmodernism: The return of the agrarian myth. New York: Routledge.
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A trenchant critique of the tradition of peasant studies derived from the work of Chayanov (below), by one of the leading students of the development of capitalism in the Indian countryside. Argues against the idea that class differentiation is not proceeding apace in the peasantry.
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Chayanov, Alexander. 1966. The theory of peasant economy. Translated by D. Thorner, et al. Homewood, IL: R.D. Irwin.
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Argues from a position of peasant populism which denies that class differentiation is occurring among the peasantry and that capitalism is advancing in the countryside. Essential reading but not published in English until 1966, this early 20th-century critique of class differentiation among the Russian peasantry offers dissenting views from Marx and Lenin and became the center of the debate on the peasantry under capitalism.
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Lenin, Vladimir. 1978. The development of capitalism in Russia. Moscow: Progress.
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The classical Marxist analysis of class differentiation in the countryside which Chayanov rejected. Essential to understand the debate about capitalism, the peasantry, and the so-called agrarian myth.
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Roseberry, William. 1983. Coffee and capitalism in the Venezuelan Andes. Austin: Univ. of Texas Press.
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An ethnohistory by the late Marxist anthropologist which emphasizes proletarianization and the creation of a dependent peasantry in the Venezuelan coffee sector.
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Shenton, R. W., and Louise Lennihan. 1981. Capital and class: Peasant differentiation in Northern Nigeria. The Journal of Peasant Studies 9.1: 47–70.
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Application of Lenin’s theory of class differentiation among the peasantry to Northern Nigeria with important implications for understanding the development of capitalism in sub-Saharan Africa more generally.
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Silverman, Sydel. 1979. The peasant concept in anthropology. The Journal of Peasant Studies 7.1: 49–69.
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Silverman’s article is a review of the theoretical and methodological approaches to studying the peasantry.
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Wolf, Eric. 1969. Peasant wars of the twentieth century. New York: Harper & Row.
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In this book, Wolf considers some of the most important revolutions in the 20th century from the perspectives of peasant people, never losing sight of the larger political, economic, and historical contexts of the revolution he analyzes.
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Development

The issue of capitalism and development in the Third World is a very broad one in which a number of debates have raged. The first set of issues has to do with modernization theory which, developed from the ideas of Durkheim and Weber, approach development from an evolutionary point of view, sorting societies into those which are “traditional” (pre-capitalist) and those which are “modern” (capitalist)—the distinction having to do with the lack of social differentiation and the prevalence of communitarian values (“mechanical solidarity”) on the traditional side, versus a highly differentiated institutional structure and the prevalence of liberal values (“organic solidarity”) on the other. In this analysis the cause of the lack of development lay within the developing countries themselves and the task of promoting capitalist development was one of institutionalizing a different value system from without, namely one based on an “achievement orientation.” Geertz 1963 is a good example of this approach. This contrasts sharply with that developed within dependency theory by Frank 1966 in which the lack of development, whether capitalist or socialist, was seen as something produced by the actions of the developed countries—an expression of the “dependency” of the developing countries on the industrialized “First” world. Cardoso and Enzo 1979 makes a similar argument but allow for the possibility of dependent forms of development while stressing the importance of internally exploitative social relationships as well. Rodney 1981 is an application of dependency theory to Africa. A subset of dependency theory is “articulation of mode of production” theory which was developed by French Marxist anthropologists and widely applied to the development of migrant labor situations (mainly mining) in southern African colonial capitalism. The argument here was that colonial capitalism, far from eroding old economic relations, adapted these often rural peasant relationships to its own needs by using the migrant labor system to palm off some of the costs of reproducing labor unto the rural communities of origin. The third school in the literature which is more recent is “post-development” theory articulated in Escobar 1995. This approach, influenced by Foucault, Said, and postcolonial theory, questions the very goal of development itself. The tendency here is to emphasize local indigenous solutions and small-scale development efforts combined with moves to create alternative trading and currency blocs “delinked” from the global metropolitan systems. Post-development theory has been criticized, including in Gardner and Lewis 1996, for not being able to offer practical to current development policies. Ferguson 1990, influenced by the post-development viewpoint, critiques the work of the Manchester School of anthropologists which he argues presents a far too determinist and optimistic picture of Zambian development. Macmillan 1993 engages in a sharp debate with Ferguson, arguing that Manchester School anthropologists in fact had an open-ended view of Zambian development prospects in the colonial period.

Cardoso, Fernando Henrique, and Faletto Enzo. 1979. Dependency and development in Latin America. Transated by Marjory Mattingly Urquidi. Berkeley: Univ. of California Press.
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A foundational work to the debate on the Global South and capitalism, becoming part of what became known as “dependency theory.”
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Escobar, Arturo. 1995. Encountering development: The making and unmaking of the third world. Princeton, NJ: Princeton Univ. Press.
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The full critique of modernization theory which laid the foundation for post-development theory in anthropology. One of the most influential contemporary theoretical formulations in anthropology.
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Ferguson, James. 1990. Mobile workers, modernist narratives: A critique of the historiography of transition in the Zambian Copperbelt. Parts 1–2. Journal of Southern African Studies 16.3: 385–412, 3–21.
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Very important critique of Zambian anthropology and other social science studies of development in Zambia. Argues that the analyses tend to privilege the urban, severing it from rural life because of a teleological bias toward development. Critiqued by Macmillan 1993.
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Frank, Andre Gunder. 1966. The development of underdevelopment. New York: Monthly Review.
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Frank’s classic work looks at how development in the West has simultaneously underdeveloped the Third World and created economic structures where the Third World remains dependent on it.
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Gardner, Katy, and David Lewis. 1996. Anthropology, development and the post-modern challenge. London: Pluto.
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Gardner and Lewis review the theoretical debates on post-development and argue that the critiques of development theory and practice from this perspective have merit but are unable to advance a convincing alternative.
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Geertz, Clifford. 1963. Peddlers and princes: Social change and economic modernization in two Indonesian towns. Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press.
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An ethnography based on modernization theory, especially the aspect derived from Max Weber’s Protestant Ethic.
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Macmillan, Hugh. 1993. The historiography of transition on the Zambian Copperbelt—Another view. Journal of Southern African Studies 19.4: 681–712.
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Detailed critique of Ferguson’s account of Copperbelt development (above) by a Zambian historian. Argues against Ferguson’s thesis of Zambian development studies being dominated by a teleological modernist narrative.
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Rodney, Walter. 1981. How Europe underdeveloped Africa. Washington, DC: Howard Univ. Press.
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A foundational work which argues that the development of Europe is structurally connected to the exploitation (past and present) and underdevelopment of Africa.
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Neoliberalism and Globalization

Anthropological studies of globalization are far more frequent than ethnographic studies of neoliberalism. Globalization studies include the broad theorizing of the cross-border spread of popular culture and the consequent emergence of a global “creole” culture as in the works of Appadurai 1996 and Hannerz 1996. The argument of Friedman and Friedman 2011, in effect a critique of Hannerz and Appadurai, discusses globalization as an elite discursive practice which necessarily produces localist reactions. There are also the studies on the political economy side which stress contradictions within the global economy between the First and the Third Worlds. Most studies distinguish analytically between “neoliberalism” proper—privatization, deregulation, and the extension of market relations—and “globalization,” which refers to the growth of a global capital, currency, service and goods market interlinked in real time by digital technology. In practice since the two phenomena occur simultaneously, scholars will write of “neoliberal globalization” but one must be careful to be aware that other types of globalization—regulated state-to-state transactions, for example—are possible. An important example of the line of analysis which integrates the analysis of globalization with neoliberalism is Comaroff and Comaroff 2001, an article on “millenarian capitalism” which discusses the cultural consequences and local divisiveness which this form of free market capitalism produces in sub-Saharan Africa. This is consistent with Harvey 2005 which presents a very general concept of neoliberalism emphasizing deregulation and the prevalence of market relations. Ethnographic case studies of neoliberal globalization are many, with the work of Collins 2003 being one of the most outstanding. Ho 2009 is distinctive because it takes up the issues at the core rather than in the periphery. Finally, there are analyses of globalization outside of the Western context. Tsing 2005, a study of Indonesian logging, is one very important case of what one could call “informal globalization.” Ong 2006 takes up the political side of globalization and unpacks the phenomenon while analyzing it from a particular Asian perspective. When this is done a very different picture of the relationship of globalization to late capitalism emerges: a more pragmatic picture of both neo-liberalism and globalization is painted, one in which states pick and choose which elements of either they will or will not adopt. This literature raises the interesting question of whether a focus on Western versions of neo-liberalism and globalization has not imparted a level of abstract coherence to these processes which they lack in reality. This point about the complexity and variations of neoliberal discursive practices is taken up by Clarke 2008 which provides an important summary review of the issues.

Appadurai, Arjun. 1996. Modernity at large: Cultural dimensions of globalization. Minneapolis: Univ. of Minnesota Press.
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In this eminent work, Appadurai emphasizes that while the processes of (and new discourses that accompany) globalization are grabbing headlines these days, the importance of how local processes are shaped, transformed, and recreated must also be understood, specifically with regard to culture.
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Clarke, John. 2008. Living with/in and without neo-liberalism. Focaal—European Journal of Anthropology 51:135–147.
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An important critique of the loose usage of the concept of neo-liberalism from a Foucauldian perspective. Argues for more attention to be paid to the variety of discursive forms of neo-liberalism and to the many contestations and contradictions which it generates.
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Collins, Jane. 2003. Threads: Gender, labor and power in the global apparel industry. Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press.
DOI: 10.7208/chicago/9780226113739.001.0001Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
In this ethnographic work, Collins researches two separate apparel factories in the United States and Mexico, looking especially at how transnational capitalism is structured so that the relocation/subcontracting of labor has become such a prevalent phenomenon.
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Comaroff, John, and Jean Comaroff. 2001. Millennial capitalism: First thought on a second coming. In Millennial capitalism and the culture of neoliberalism. Edited by John Comaroff and Jean Comaroff. Durham, NC: Duke Univ. Press.
DOI: 10.1215/9780822380184Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
This article contributes to their volume on neoliberal capitalism and the centrality of developments to it outside of simple economics, looking at, among other things, the interconnectedness of consumption, selfhood, identity, community, and gender to what they call “millennial capitalism.”
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Friedman, Kasja, and Jonathan Friedman. 2011. Modernities, class and the contradictions of globalization: The anthropology of global systems. Walnut Creek, CA: Altamira.
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Treatment of globalization as a discourse and policy of cosmopolitan elites disconnected from the lives of ordinary people. Important for the debates on anti-immigrant reactions in Europe.
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Harvey, David. 2005. A brief history of neoliberalism. Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press.
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A compilation of lectures that traces the origins of neoliberal capitalism, conceptually distinguishing this form of capitalism from earlier forms.
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Hannerz, Ulf. 1996. Transnational connections: Culture, people, places. New York: Routledge.
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Argues that globalization is producing a transnational “creole” culture which to some degree is a new transnational synthesis rather than just a collection of separately widespread cultural items.
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Ho, Karen. 2009. Liquidated: An ethnography of Wall Street. Durham, NC: Duke Univ. Press.
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Few anthropological studies of neo-liberal globalization locate the issues at the center rather than the periphery. This is one of them.
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Ong, Aihwa. 2006. Neoliberalism as exception: Mutations in citizenship and sovereignty. Durham, NC: Duke Univ. Press.
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An ethnography of four communities in East and Southeast Asia which looks at neoliberalism as a “technology” of governmentality rather than as an economic system. The emphasis is on the pragmatism of a selective application of aspects of neoliberal policy for competitive advantage in the global marketplace without necessarily adopting the entire neoliberal system.
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Tsing, Anna. 2005. Friction: An ethnography of global connection. Princeton, NJ: Princeton Univ. Press.
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Important ethnographic study of how globalization has impacted the Indonesian rainforests through the activities of a complex chain of actors including illegal loggers and local and international environmental NGOs. Tends to place the contradictions of late capitalism not so much at the point where global capitalist relations meet the centers of global finance but where center meets periphery—the source of the “friction” in the title.
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Alienation

The argument that capitalism produces deep alienation and cultural commodification is rooted in the works of early 19th-century German romanticism and later in the works of Weber, Toennies, Simmel, Lukacs, and Benjamin. It continues to be highly influential. Weber 1978 sets out the comprehensive framework for this viewpoint in his ironic account of how capitalism, emerging from an affirmation of individual piety, is transformed into a bureaucratic system subordinating the individual. Toennies 1957 constructs a typology which sharply contrasts the communitarian relations of pre-capitalist society with the associational ties which prevail under capitalism. A “society” of anonymous strangers is created—an agglomeration of individuals each separately pursuing their self-interest. Also, as market relations are extended, any notion of intrinsic qualitative value vanishes and all goods and services become measured in purely quantitative terms (exchange value), including the most sophisticated works of art and culture. The ultimate result is, to use Max Weber’s phrase, the “disenchantment of the world” and the substitution for this hitherto “sacred” world, of a brutally secular one dominated, according to Simmel 1978, by a philosophy of money. Simmel himself argued that this extreme alienation, while stronger in capitalist society than elsewhere, was not historically rooted in capitalism but is a feature of the human condition. Benjamin 2002, influenced by Simmel, sharply critiques what he portrays as the morally and aesthetically hollow nature of capitalist civilization. Lukacs 1971 is regarded as a forerunner of Euromarxism in so far as it departs from a Leninist theory of class consciousness. Herf 1984 argues that far from being antithetical, capitalist modernity is compatible with authoritarianism. These developments not only lead to the rise of sociology as a discipline (critiquing what is presented as these harmful social tendencies of capitalism) but also have a profound effect on the arts—Expressionism, Dadaism, and Cubism—as well as on classical music (the growth of atonality). Lowy and Sayre 2001, while taking up many of Lukacs’s ideas take a positive political stance with regard to the romantic anticapitalist tradition. Distinct from this cultural-aesthetic critique of capitalist alienation is the more materialist analyses, including in Ollman 1971, which emphasize the growth of alienation in terms of private ownership of the means of production and the practice of “alienated labor” and the alienation of the products of labor which necessarily accompanies it. Although these traditions overlap, they are not identical.

Benjamin, Walter. 2002. The Arcades Project. Cambridge, MA: Harvard Univ. Press.
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An early comprehensive critique of the commodification of social and cultural life under capitalism—from prostitution to the most refined products of bourgeois high culture.
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Herf, Jeffrey. 1984. Reactionary modernism: Technology, culture, and politics in Weimar and the Third Reich. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge Univ. Press.
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The classical analysis of right-wing solutions to capitalist alienation which sought to retain the technological dynamism of capitalism without the negative effects by means of an authoritarian corporatist politics.
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Lowy, Michael, and Robert Sayre. 2001. Romanticism against the tide of modernity. Durham, NC: Duke Univ. Press.
DOI: 10.1215/9780822381297Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
The most comprehensive interpretation of romanticism as an expression of alienation from capitalism in Europe, especially in Germany, England, and France. Argues against the view that romanticism necessarily leads to a political position on the right.
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Lukacs, Gyorgy. 1971. History and class consciousness: Studies in Marxist dialectics. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
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The original work in which the theory of “reification” was developed. The influence of Weber and Simmel on Lukacs’s thinking is particularly clear in this work in which the concept of anticapitalist romanticism also finds preliminary expression.
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Ollman, Bertell. 1971. Alienation: Marx’s conception of man in a capitalist society. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge Univ. Press.
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The classic modern account of alienation. Thorough and complete interpretation of Marx’s ideas on the subject.
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Simmel, Georg. 1978. The philosophy of money. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul.
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A classic critique of the commodification of culture which becomes most acute under capitalism but is a more general feature of human existence.
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Toennies, Ferdinand. 1957. Community and society. New York: Harper and Row.
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The original formulation of the conflict created by modern capitalism between Gemeinschaft (“Community”) and Gesellschaft (“Society”). “Community” is presented as a basically wholesome (rural) culture which is self-fulfilling. “Society” on the other hand is a zone of (urban) alienation characterized by instrumental rationality, utility, and egoistic behavior. Extremely influential in the development of sociological theory especially in conceptions of “urbanism.”
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Weber, Max. 1978. Economy and society: An outline of interpretive sociology. Edited by Guenther Roth and Claus Wittich. Los Angeles: Univ. of California Press.
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Weber’s classic work which encompasses a number of themes, in particular his theory of types of domination. Present in these voluminous writings is also the idea that capitalism is inescapably evolving into an “iron cage” of bureaucracy which threatens individuality and liberal values and to which a modern adaptation of charismatic domination may offer one solution.
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Race

The literature in this section raises the contested but highly important political and economic question of the relationship between race and capitalism historically as well as in the contemporary period. This relationship, if any, is particularly important in the context of debates about the rise of an anti-immigrant cultural racism in late capitalist Europe as a response to the perceived threats of globalization. Stolcke 1995, despite its brevity, remains the classical discussion of anti-immigrant cultural fundamentalism. Mullings 2005, focusing more on racism than race, contests Stolcke’s formulations, arguing that fundamentalism (and multiculturalism) are really forms of unmarked racism which are characteristic ideologies of neo-liberal global capitalism. Many approaches argue that, historically speaking, race and racism is a strictly Western capitalist phenomenon associated with the rise of the Atlantic slave trade, plantation slavery, and colonialism. Omi and Winant 1986 develops this view with respect to the United States. A special application of the capitalism and race thesis exists in the historical literature on South African colonial capitalism in Wolpe 1972. There the notion of “racial capitalism” continues to have a strong influence on analyses of the workings of the apartheid economic system. More recent work by historians of Asia and medieval Europe have challenged this view of racism as arising from or being necessarily linked to capitalism. These historians, including in Hall 2011, argue for a more flexible definition of race and racism while documenting the long existence of racial difference in many parts of Africa, the Middle East, Europe, and Asia, well before the capitalist era and in a variety of cultural contexts. Nirenberg 2009 makes a similar point in relation to anti-Semitism in Spain. Bethencourt 2014 is the first comprehensive study of racism from pre-capitalist through to capitalist socieities. In this body of work, race is treated as essentially a pre-capitalist phenomenon, a point sharply contested in the South African literature. Hall 2002 discusses race as an identity arising out of the political dominance of a culturally heteorgenous majority by a relatively culturally homogenous minority, implicitly connecting it to the dynamics of contemporary capitalist society. Gilroy 2000 on the other hand critiques the promotion of racial identities by African American cultural figures deeming it as not grounded in the realities of contemporary capitalist social relations and as politically divisive. Finally, functionalist views, still highly influential, for example in Stolcke’s work, depart from the seminal analysis of Barth 1998 on ethnicity which sees this as as a type of boundary making and marking. This can also be applied to the theorization of race and cultural fundamentalism. This line of analysis however posits no inherent connection between capitalism and ethnicity and further suffers from the disadvantage of not sufficiently considering the specific historical content of ethnicities or racisms—for example, the differences between anti-Semitism in Europe and anti-black racism in the Americas.

Barth, Fredrik. 1998. Ethnic groups and boundaries: The social organization of culture difference. Prospects Heights, IL: Waveland.
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In this book, Barth argues that ethnic groups and boundaries persist despite the fragmenting processes of changing participation/membership and inclusion/exclusion, and that they are still important for understanding social interaction and social systems.
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Bethencourt, Francisco. 2014. Racisms: From the Crusades to the twentieth century. Princeton, NJ: Princeton Univ. Press.
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The most comprehensive study of the subject which argues that racism comes in many forms in various cultures, that it preceded scientific concepts of race and arose out of situations of political and social hierarchy and oppression.
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Gilroy, Paul. 2000. Against race: Imagining political culture beyond the color line. Cambridge, UK: Harvard Univ. Press.
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In this work, Gilroy considers why race/racialization persists in the modern era despite all the presumed “progress” since the civil rights and black power movements in the post–World War II era, ultimately arguing for the priority of a new political language that relies on concepts inherent to a utopian liberalism rather than ones based on race in order to improve the prospects of modern democracy.
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Hall, Bruce. 2011. A history of race in Muslim West Africa, 1600–1960. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge Univ. Press.
DOI: 10.1017/CBO9780511976766Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
Pathbreaking study by a historian of precolonial racial concepts in Africa—principally in northern Mali and between the Tuareg, Songhai, and Bella peoples. Documents in detail the development of racism in a pre-capitalist context and criticizes the works of Mamdani and others who argue that tribalism and racism are creations of colonial capitalism.
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Hall, Stuart. 2002. Race, articulation and societies structured in dominance. In Race critical theories: Text and context. Edited by Philomena Essed and David Theo Goldberg. Malden, MA: Blackwell.
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Very important analysis of the variability of racial conceptions depending on the social, cultural and political context, from the point of view of the cultural studies paradigm.
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Mullings, Leith. 2005. Interrogating racism: Towards an anti-racist anthropology. Annual Review of Anthropology 43: 667–693.
DOI: 10.1146/annurev.anthro.32.061002.093435Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
Arguing strongly for the connection of racism to the rise of capitalism but focuses more on racism rather than on race per se.
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Nirenberg, David. 2009. Was there race before modernity? The example of “Jewish blood” in late medieval Spain. In The origins of racism in the West. Edited by Miriam Eliav-Feldon, Benjamin Isaac, and Joseph Ziegler, 232–264. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge Univ. Press.
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Excellent discussion of racial concepts in a pre-capitalist European context supporting the tendency to understand race and racism as existing independently of capitalism.
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Omi, Michael, and Howard Winant. 1986. Racial formation in the United States: From the 1960s to the 1980s. New York: Routledge and Kegan Paul.
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Foundational theorizing of race and “racial formation” as a result of social constructions tied to economic and social privilege. A somewhat Western-centric perspective which highlights the role of colonization and slavery in the process of “racial formation.”
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Stolcke, Verena. 1995. Talking culture: New boundaries, new rhetorics of exclusion in Europe. Current Anthropology 36:1–24.
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The classical discussion of anti-immigrant cultural racism in Europe.
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Wolpe, Harold. 1972. Capitalism and cheap labour-power in South Africa: From segregation to apartheid. Economy and Society 1.4: 425–456.
DOI: 10.1080/03085147200000023Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
The seminal statement of the South African “racial capitalism” school. Closely related to the scholarship of Trapido and Legassick.
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Space and Place

This is a relatively new trend in the anthropological and sociological literature which focuses on political struggles around urban neighborhoods between different social groups in late capitalist society. The crucial point here is the overall political conclusion: in late capitalism, it is argued, these struggles over space and the right to the city replace or at least are as important as old social movements such as trade unions which arose at the point of production in an earlier phase of capitalism. The scholarship, led by the work of many human geographers, including David Harvey, is rooted in the ideas of the late French Marxist sociologist, Henri Lefebvre. Its argument is that capitalism produces a particular kind of spatial arrangement which reflects capitalist interests (gentrification, suburbanization, ghettoization, social distance, political control) and these “spaces” dictate the pace and character of everyday life and are a vital part of the subordination of the working and middle classes. The approach in Lefebvre 1991 is strongly phenomenological in so far as he rejects a purely materialist determination of the construction of space and argues for the importance of social and cultural perceptions and outlooks—in other words, the role of non-material, subjective factors. Lefebvre contrasts the top-down creation of space by dominant social groups with the contestation of the process from below—“place-making” by the working and middle class. Here the influence of German 19th-century critiques of capitalism is apparent, in so far as it could be said that “place” is to “space” as “community” is to “society.” However, this kind of dichotomous view is precisely what some contemporary cultural geographers dispute, such as in Merrifield 1993. The work of Harvey 2000, which sometimes characterizes itself as historical and geographical materialism, is a synthesis of the Marxist materialist approach and the purely phenomenological one. At times the emphasis is on the material consequences for space of the contradictions and processes of capitalist accumulation—the need for capitalism to resolve its realization problem with a “spatial fix” as well as the desire for political control. At other times it is the literary and aesthetic tendencies which Harvey and other theorists stress, not physical space in a literal sense. The point for him is that, for both phenomenological and materialist reasons, urban spaces have become a key arena of political struggle in late capitalism. Smith 1984 theorizes similar issues but in a purely materialist vein in which gentrification is driven largely by economic and political forces. Most studies of space, however, lack Harvey’s phenomenological sophistication or Smith’s complex Marxist theorization and simply look at how particular social groups configure physical spaces to their convenience and interest and the impact which this has on social and cultural divisiveness. Concrete case studies of space and place-making are becoming more common: Susser 2012 is a study of neighborhood political struggles in the rights to the city tradition. Schivelbusch 1987 is a historical study of the development of railways in 19th-century Britain and is one of the best examples of this genre. Low and Lawrence-Zúñiga 2003 is a collection of theoretical and empirical short studies which covers both the symbolic and more materialist approaches. Gieryn 2000 is a review of the sociological literature on the subject but, unlike in the anthropological literature, it is the material reality of space which is emphasized. In the sociological literature, Sassen 2007 stresses the role of global forces in shaping space at the national and local levels.

Gieryn, Thomas. 2000. A space for place in sociology. Annual Review of Sociology 26:463–496.
DOI: 10.1146/annurev.soc.26.1.463Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
A review of the literature on space and place in sociology and an argument for more attention to these issues in the discipline.
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Harvey, David 2000. Spaces of hope. Los Angeles: Univ. of California Press.
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Using Baltimore as a case study, the author gives an account of the crisis of the urban environment and argues for the importance of “utopian imaginings” in developing alternatives. Deeply critical of the consequences of capitalism in American cities.
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Lefebvre, Henri. 1991. The production of space. Oxford: Blackwell.
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The classical phenomenological formulation of the distinction between “space” and “place” in the context of a distinctive anti-capitalist critique.
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Low, Setha, and Denise Lawrence-Zúñiga, ed. 2003. The anthropology of space and place: Locating culture. Oxford: Blackwell.
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Very useful overview collection of papers on space of different scales. Good introduction to the subject.
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Merrifield, Andrew. 1993. Place and space: A Lefebvrian reconciliation. Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers, new ser., 18.4: 516–531.
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Critiques the view that “space” and “place” are antithetical concepts. Argues that the relationship is “dialectical,” meaning that they are not to be understood rigidly as mutually exclusive but overlapping and intermixed in contradictory ways. The author’s focus is on the political consequences of an antithetical versus a dialectical concept of the distinction.
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Sassen, Saskia, ed. 2007. Deciphering the global: Its spaces, scales and subjects. New York: Routledge.
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Useful collection of sixteen studies looking at space and place at the national level as scaled down representations of global capitalist forces.
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Schivelbusch, Wolfgang. 1987. The railway journey: The industrialization and perception of time and space. Los Angeles: Univ. of California Press.
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Important study of how the development of railways in 19th-century Britain fundamentally reconfigured people’s sense of time and space.
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Smith, Neil. 1984. Uneven development: Nature, capital and the production of space. Oxford: Blackwell.
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The fullest contemporary exposition of the theory of uneven geographical development.
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Susser, Ida. 2012. Norman Street: Poverty and politics in an urban neighborhood. Updated ed. New York: Oxford Univ. Press.
DOI: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195367317.001.0001Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
An updated version of one of the most important anthropological studies of the politics of space in a New York neighborhood.
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Money and Value

The material in this section addresses the issue of value formation generally and especially under capitalism as well as the issue of the emergence and role of money. There are firstly the classical theories of value in which is included the labor theory of value propounded in Ricardo 1996, and the Marxist critique of this theory developed later in Marx 1999. Despite their differences the classical and Marxist theories have some key features in common. Both Ricardo and Marx (as did Adam Smith before them; see Smith 1977, cited under General Theories) argue that value creation and the existence of money is an objective process and not simply a matter of subjective declarations and arbitrary actions by dominant elites. Secondly, both make the distinction between use-value (intrinsic) and exchange-value (arising in the market and comparable to but not identical with price). Both also argue that the emphasis on exchange value is a peculiarity of capitalism and that the critical element in the production of value is the labor process. In this line of reasoning money has an objective function––it is a measure of real exchange value and therefore can act as a means of exchange and a unit of account. From this point of view, there are real objective limits to the extent to which even the most politically powerful state can expand (or contract) its money supply without producing dire inflationary (or deflationary) consequences, including the collapse of the entire economic system. The alternative view of value-creation and the analysis of money conceives of the process as more a cultural and political rather than an economic one. Parry and Bloch 1989 argues that money is principally a symbolic cultural system of attributing value to objects. Guyer 2004 takes a similar cultural line in her discussion of variations in concepts of value in West Africa. Graeber 2011 adopts a more political explanation in that money is always “fiat-money” whose value is imposed through the exercise—usually arbitrary and self-interested—of power by dominant elites. From this angle, control of the state becomes a crucial element in understanding what is given value and in whose interest, and what is demeaned as of little consequence. Likewise, the value (and devaluation) of money is essentially a subjective act controlled by elites who invariably pursue their own self-interest. Elements of both approaches—a marxisant conception of surplus value-extraction coexisting side-by-side with a culturalist one—sometimes can be found in the same scholar. Hart 2000, which posits a digital foundation for new forms of money in the era of globalization, is a case in point. Maurer 2006 reviews the anthropological literature on the subject with a tendency to emphasize the discursive and symbolic tradition.

Graeber, David. 2011. Debt: The first 5,000 years. New York: Melville House.
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Debt as the origin of money and the role of violence in the development of the economy. The most comprehensive anthropological account of the history of the rise of money and markets very influenced by Polanyi and Mauss. A contemporary classic.
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Guyer, Jane. 2004. Marginal gains: Monetary transactions in Atlantic Africa. Chicago: Chicago Univ. Press.
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In this book, Guyer takes up the entangling and often confusing issue of how value is conceived and constructed in Atlantic Africa, looking at traditional practices, what she deems to be an interlinked commercial culture, and how Westerners should attempt to make sense of it all.
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Hart, Keith. 2000. The memory bank: Money in an unequal world. London: Profile.
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Taking the increasing level of inequality in the world as a backdrop, Hart considers how the world should improve technological and cultural infrastructures going forward to ensure that recent advancements (particular emphasis is put on digital technology and the Internet) do not reinforce and exacerbate unequal exchange networks.
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Marx, Karl. 1999. Theories of surplus value. Amherst, MA: Prometheus.
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The most thorough exposition of Marx’s labor theory of value as well as of the overall creation and accumulation of surplus value under capitalism.
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Maurer, Bill. 2006. Anthropology of money. Annual Review of Anthropology 35:15–36.
DOI: 10.1146/annurev.anthro.35.081705.123127Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
Maurer’s article reviews approaches to studying money and finance within anthropology, but also takes into consideration relevant works from other disciplines.
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Mauss, Marcel. 1990. The gift: The form and reason for exchange in archaic societies. London: Routledge.
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A classic work that has formed the backbone of several subdisciplines in anthropology, the eminent French sociologist places primacy on the concept of reciprocity for understanding the basis of exchange in early societies.
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Parry, Jonathan, and Maurice Bloch, eds. 1989. Money and the morality of exchange. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge Univ. Press.
DOI: 10.1017/CBO9780511621659Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
This is a volume that focuses specifically on the symbolic representations of money through a cross-cultural analysis, emphasizing the importance of cultural meanings that infuse how money/value is understood.
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Ricardo, David. 1996. Principles of political economy and taxation. Amherst, MA: Prometheus.
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The famous exposition of the classical labor theory of value which Marx critiqued. Also discusses the distinction between “exchange value” and “value-in-use” which became foundational for Marx’s theories of value.
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Alternatives

This is the broad area of alternatives to capitalism, including aspects of the substantivist-formalist debate which impinge on this issue as well as the debate about “alternative” and “multiple” modernities. There is also an older literature about the merits and feasibility of centrally planned “state socialism” versus “market socialism.” Nove 1983 is the classic representative of this school which argues for hybrid forms of market socialism. Brus and Laski 1996 goes much further, using the authors’ direct practical experience of Eastern European state socialist economies to critique central planning. Verdery 1996, drawing upon the author’s knowledge of Romanian collectivization, makes a similar argument. Kasmir 1996 takes a more empirical approach in her study of the large Mondragon cooperative in the Basque country. She concludes that while the cooperative differs substantially from a privately owned firm, it does not offer a feasible alternative solution to the problems of capitalism. Finally there is a newer literature which critiques capitalism but which specifically seeks to avoid any element of “state socialism”—the human economy work of Hart and Hann 2009 being one of the most respected versions of this trend. Drawing critically on the writings of Polanyi, the authors argue for a more regulated economy at the global, national, and local levels which would put human needs first. The substantivist-formalist debate is also relevant here: it focused on the claim that pre-capitalist economies (especially in Africa) were not full market economies and as a result, neo-classical economic analysis could not be applied to them. The counter-argument from the formalist side, in Cook 1966, was that the applicability of neo-classical economics did not hinge on the presence or absence of market domination since it was a method of analyzing rational choice decision-making in whatever sociocultural or economic context. Further, the argument went, in any event, substantivists were prone to exaggerate the extent to which market relations are absent from pre-capitalist societies. This debate is included here because the subtext was the following: in so far as ethnography could reveal cases of actual economies which were non-market in their workings, this provided support for the case that capitalist market economies were not an inevitable universal phenomenon but a historically limited case. The conclusion which followed from this was that, at least in principle, one could derive a non-capitalist alternative to “real existing capitalism” by utilizing pre-capitalist economic principles of market embedding to generate alternatives to capitalism. Such an argument is implicit in Mauss’s well-known work—The Gift—for example. Alternative modernity derived from analyses of Japanese production systems in the 1960s. These studies did not so much set forth an alternative to capitalism in its entirety. Instead they argued, including Dore 1973, that the Japanese and German system had found firm-level solutions to the age-old problems of worker alienation characteristic of Western capitalist enterprises. Finally there is the body of literature associated with the contemporary anti-globalization movement, including Cavanagh 2002. The thrust in this literature is to seek for solutions in “localization”—with smaller firms operating in limited market circuits.

Brus, Wlodzimierz, and Kasimierz Laski. 1996. From Marx to the market: Socialism in search of an economic system. Oxford: Clarendon.
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Early analysis of the problems of state socialist economies governed by central planning and the difficulty of combining market and plan.
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Cavanagh, John, ed. 2002. Alternatives to economic globalization: A better world is possible. San Francisco: Berrett-Koehler.
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The approach of the global social forums movement favoring ‘“localization” as a solution to the ills of globalization.
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Cook, Scott. 1966. The obsolete ‘anti-market’ mentality: A critique of the substantive approach to economic anthropology. American Anthropologist 68.2: 323–345.
DOI: 10.1525/aa.1966.68.2.02a00010Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
Perhaps the most widely recognized rejoinder to the “substantivist” approach to “primitive economics” within economic anthropology, Cook argues strongly for the validity of using concepts that originally emerged in modern economic theory for critiquing premodern economic structures.
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Dore, Ronald. 1973. British factory, Japanese factory: The origins of national diversity in industrial relations. Los Angeles: Univ. of California Press.
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The extremely influential study which started the alternative modernities debate in the economic realm. An early comparison of British and Japanese production systems which concluded that the Japanese system had resolved many of the contradictions of British capitalism especially in the field of worker relationships and social solidarity.
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Hart, Keith, and Chris Hann, ed. 2009. Market and society: The great transformation today. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge Univ. Press.
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A collection of papers critically examining the relevance of Polanyi’s economic theories for today’s global economy. The overall conclusion is that Polanyi’s critique of “market society” while valid in many respects, is one-sided in so far as it insufficiently appreciates the social ties generated through the market within capitalist production processes and society as a whole.
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Kasmir, Sharon. 1996. The myth of Mondragon: Cooperatives, politics, and the working class. Albany: State Univ. of New York Press.
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Critical analysis of the Mondragon experience. Concludes that it does not offer a real alternative to capitalist practices.
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Nove, Alec. 1983. The economics of feasible socialism. London: Unwin Hyman.
DOI: 10.4324/9780203168813Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
The most thorough discussion in English of the difficulties of a centrally planned economy. Makes the argument that the only feasible form of socialist economy is one which combines market and plan.
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Verdery, Katherine. 1996. What was socialism and what comes next? Princeton, NJ: Princeton Univ. Press.
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Anthropological account of the contradictions of “state socialism” in Eastern Europe with a special emphasis on Romania.