Sunday, March 8, 2015

Historical relativism in the study of economics

I appreciate David Graeber's advocacy for historical relativism in economics throughout Debt, but in particular a passage from chapter 10 of the book struck me this week:
"To take what might seem an 'objective' economic approach to the origins of the world economy would be to treat the behavior of early European explorers, merchants, and conquerors as if they were simply rational responses to opportunities -- as if this were just what anyone would have done in the same situation. ... In fact, history makes it clear that this is not the case." (p314)
"Rational behavior" as defined by modern-day economists could have in certain historical contexts "require[d] the destruction of entire civilizations" (p314). Graeber then goes on to discuss the case of Cortes and his conquistadors. Cortes had debts to pay and destroyed the Aztec capital of Tenochtitlan with the mindset of not only repaying the debts but going over and above that rate for personal use. His soldiers, however, found themselves in debt to the system of repayment set up by Cortes and enacted by surgeons, barbers, apothecaries, and others for services rendered during battle. This debt was then forced onto the indigenous population, who were made to work to the death in the rich mines of the region.

The outrage against the "wildly inflated prices for basic necessities" (which in this case resulted in other atrocities) manifests repeatedly across time and space (p318). I think of the #Occupy protests, for example, or current movements arguing that higher education should be a right. I'm not saying that these movements will end up the same as the conquistadors' treatment of the Aztecs, but I do think it is poignant that the prices of commodities can skyrocket without reproach far beyond what can happen with basic necessities. Historical relativism aids the study of any historical culture, but certain behaviors or rather reactions do seem commonplace across time and space.

2 comments:

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  2. You picked up on a particular passage in Graeber’s book, "Debt," in the chapter, “Age of the Great Capitalist Empires,” (p.314) that I found to be pretty provocative, too. The ultimate point here is to force us to look into the face of greed and acknowledge a rather historically unprecedented manifestation of greed in U.S. capitalism-gone-global (i.e., globalization/neoliberalism)—an ideology and economic strategy that draws on its direct genealogical connections to Europe. Graeber uses history beautifully in this context. He asks us to reflect on the origins of a system that rewards “greed raised to mythic proportions” (Graeber,315) while noting historically, that “any number of civilizations have probably been in a position to wreak havoc on the scale that the European powers did in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, but almost none actually did so" (Graeber, 314).

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