[ 48 ] The Great Transformation
was largely on a level with ancient Persia, India, or China, and cer-
tainly could not rival in riches and culture the New Kingdom of Egypt,
two thousand years before. Max Weber was the first among modern
economic historians to protest against the brushing aside of primitive
economics as irrelevant to the question of the motives and mecha-
nisms of civilized societies. The subsequent work of social anthropol-
ogy proved him emphatically right. For if one conclusion stands out
more clearly than another from the recent study of early societies, it is
the changelessness of man as a social being. His natural endowments
reappear with a remarkable constancy in societies of all times and
places; and the necessary preconditions of the survival of human soci-
ety appear to be immutably the same.
The outstanding discovery of recent historical and anthropologi-
cal research is that man's economy, as a rule, is submerged in his social
relationships. He does not act so as to safeguard his individual interest
in the possession of material goods; he acts so as to safeguard his social
standing, his social claims, his social assets. He values material goods
only in so far as they serve this end. Neither the process of production
nor that of distribution is linked to specific economic interests
attached to the possession of goods; but every single step in that pro-
cess is geared to a number of social interests which eventually ensure
that the required step be taken. These interests will be very different in
a small hunting or fishing community from those in a vast despotic
society, but in either case the economic system will be run on noneco-
nomic motives.
The explanation, in terms of survival, is simple. Take the case of a
tribal society. The individual's economic interest is rarely paramount,
for the community keeps all its members from starving unless it is it-
self borne down by catastrophe, in which case interests are again
threatened collectively, not individually. The maintenance of social
ties, on the other hand, is crucial. First, because by disregarding the ac-
cepted code of honor, or generosity, the individual cuts himself off
from the community and becomes an outcast; second, because, in the
long run, all social obligations are reciprocal, and their fulfillment
serves also the individual's give-and-take interests best. Such a situa-
tion must exert a continuous pressure on the individual to eliminate
economic self-interest from his consciousness to the point of making
him unable, in many cases (but by no means in all), even to compre-
Societies and Economic Systems [ 49 ]
hend the implications of his own actions in terms of such an interest.
This attitude is reinforced by the frequency of communal activities
such as partaking of food from the common catch or sharing in the re-
sults of some far-flung and dangerous tribal expedition. The premium
set on generosity is so great when measured in terms of social prestige
as to make any other behavior than that of utter self-forgetfulness sim-
ply not pay. Personal character has little to do with the matter. Man can
be as good or evil, as social or asocial, jealous or generous, in respect to
one set of values as in respect to another. Not to allow anybody reason
for jealousy is, indeed, an accepted principle of ceremonial distribu-
tion, just as publicly bestowed praise is the due of the industrious, skil-
ful, or otherwise successful gardener (unless he be too successful, in
which case he may deservedly be allowed to wither away under the de-
lusion of being the victim of black magic). The human passions, good
or bad, are merely directed toward noneconomic ends. Ceremonial
display serves to spur emulation to the utmost and the custom of com-
munal labor tends to screw up both quantitative and qualitative stan-
dards to the highest pitch. The performance of acts of exchange byway
of free gifts that are expected to be reciprocated though not necessarily
by the same individuals—a procedure minutely articulated and per-
fectly safeguarded by elaborate methods of publicity, by magic rites,
and by the establishment of "dualities" in which groups are linked in
mutual obligations—should in itself explain the absence of the notion
of gain or even of wealth other than that consisting of objects tradi-
tionally enhancing social prestige.
In this sketch of the general traits characteristic of a Western Mela-
nesian community we took no account of its sexual and territorial or-
ganization, in reference to which custom, law, magic, and religion ex-
ert their influence, as we only intended to show the manner in which
so-called economic motives spring from the context of social life. For
it is on this one negative point that modern ethnographers agree: the
absence of the motive of gain; the absence of the principle of laboring
for remuneration; the absence of the principle of least effort; and, es-
pecially, the absence of any separate and distinct institution based on
economic motives. But how, then, is order in production and distribu-
tion ensured?
The answer is provided in the main by two principles of behavior
not primarily associated with economics: reciprocity and redistribu-
[ 50 ] The Great Transformation
Hon.* With the Trobriand Islanders of Western Malanesia, who serve
as an illustration of this type of economy, reciprocity works mainly in
regard to the sexual organization of society, that is, family and kinship;
redistribution is mainly effective in respect to all those who are under
a common chief and is, therefore, of a territorial character. Let us take
these principles separately.
The sustenance of the family—the female and the children—is
the obligation of their matrilineal relatives. The male, who provides
for his sister and her family by delivering the finest specimens of his
crop, will mainly earn the credit due to his good behavior, but will
reap little immediate material benefit in exchange; if he is slack, it is
first and foremost his reputation that will suffer. It is for the benefit of
his wife and her children that the principle of reciprocity will work,
and thus compensate him economically for his acts of civic virtue.
Ceremonial display of food both in his own garden and before the re-
cipient's storehouse will ensure that the high quality of his gardening
be known to all. It is apparent that the economy of garden and house-
hold here forms part of the social relations connected with good hus-
bandry and fine citizenship. The broad principle of reciprocity helps
to safeguard both production and family sustenance.
The principle of redistribution is no less effective. A substantial
part of all the produce of the island is delivered by the village headmen
to the chief who keeps it in storage. But as all communal activity cen-
ters around the feasts, dances, and other occasions when the islanders
entertain one another as well as their neighbors from other islands (at
which the results of longdistance trading are handed out, gifts are
given and reciprocated according to the rules of etiquette, and the
chief distributes the customary presents to all), the overwhelming im-
portance of the storage system becomes apparent. Economically, it is
an essential part of the existing system of division of labor, of foreign
trading, of taxation for public purposes, of defense provisions. But
these functions of an economic system proper are completely ab-
sorbed by the intensely vivid experiences which offer superabundant
noneconomic motivation for every act performed in the frame of the
social system as a whole.
However, principles of behavior such as these cannot become
effective unless existing institutional patterns lend themselves to their
* Cf. Notes on Sources, p. 277. The works of Malinowski and Thurnwald have been
extensively used in this chapter.
Dostları ilə paylaş: |