The Wheels of Inequality . . . Or, Education for Capitalists

By Steven McLain

I can't really say enough about Fernand Braudel's three part series on Civilization and Capitalism from the fourteenth through the eighteenth century.  I can hear you saying it already, "Whoa! Steven, that sounds really boring."  Economics?  History?  Combined?  That must put you to sleep.  In fact, it's the opposite.  We all "know" how the economy works, about the invisible hand and about production, consumption and the market, but I challenge you with this: Really?  What is capitalism?  Can you define capital, or the division of labor, or really discuss how people throughout most of the history actually produced and consumed and distributed things?  Do you really know how money works?  Stew on that for a second.  Then go read The Wheel of Commerce, the second of Braudel's three part work.  Even if you think you can answer those questions (especially if you think you can answer those questions).

If you glance at the top of my blog, you'll notice that I changed the description.  It used to be something generic about reviews, and entertainment news and blah blah blah.  Now, the description is "Where cultured geeks go."  I thought long and hard about where I wanted this blog to go, about what things I wanted to say in it.  I'm big into history, and I'm big into storytelling, and I'm big into movies and TV and I wanted to venue where I could talk about all the above without feeling that I'd moved outside my niche.  Basically, I thought that entertainment reviews and updates was too blase.  It was too narrow.  So I expanded it a bit to incorporate culture, art, history--all those humanity bits that you learned in high school and have promptly forgotten, thinking they're unimportant.  I'm hear to tell you otherwise.  I want this to be a venue for people who already value their English and History classes, and hopefully bring a bit of culture to everyone who thinks otherwise.

Which is why I'm talking about Fernand Braudel.  Something came up in his book today that struck me as odd.  In the era before the Industrial Revolution, which he somewhat advisedly calls the "pre-industrial" era, people split their time between harvesting crops, and engaging in small level industry.  During the fall harvest, whole communities would abandon their industries (spinning, weaving, making rope, sewing clothes, etc.) to bring in the harvest.  But during periods when food was not being harvested, each person engaged in some form of industry.  The pattern is the same in regions in which harvests were not annually collected, in fishing communities for instance.  Small industry was the hallmark of peasant life.  

Cottage industries took those small industries and directed excess to markets, where products could be traded in kind, or purchased using money.  But Braudel goes on to talk about the necessity of industry amongst the poorest members of society.  That industry actually arises from the least wealthy.  It struck me that in the post-capitalist world, the poorest no longer require that level of industry.  They need not produce at all.  In fact, they hardly contribute even their labor, which Adam Smith considered the only capital inherent to everyone.  In theory, a welfare state provides what was once produced by one's own labor.

I suspect that this isn't entirely true; the poorest are still actually engaged in small or cottage industries, but that the markets where they are sold has changed.  Just as likely, because they are small industries they are not visible industries.  The include things like home repair, sewing clothes, producing the things that make life possible.  Where the shift actually takes place is amongst the lower middle class, the broad swath of population that are entirely wage-earners and have just enough income to dismiss small industry as beneath them.  Braudel talks about this phenomenon actually leading to the rise of textile manufacturing in what is now The Netherlands.

In the United States today, most of the population enjoys the benefit of a reasonably high income.  Possibly not as high as you or I would like, but higher than any of our forebears and most of the world alive today.  But the primary bulwark for most of human history is no longer a viable option for many Americans, especially those who live in cities, where space is the ultimate luxury.  But small industry can still reassert itself, and the self-reliance we seem to have lost in the last fifty years can be restored.  The main obstacle I see in this, however, is a woefully inadequate school system, which is incapable of providing even a basic level of education. 

Let's be clear about this: education for the masses is a good thing.  Education is an inherent good.  But we have to balance the cost of education with the ultimate return.  Because education does have a cost.  We might think about child-labor as an evil today, but children were productive and contributed to profit.  While I won't ever advocate child labor, I'd like people to consider the economic drain of removing this capital from the economy.  It has to be balanced, at some point, by the profit they will generate once they have been educated.  And since education is considered a service of the state, the state should derive more benefit from its citizens than simply the benefits of informed citizenry.  There should be economic benefits, as well.

What this means is that education needed to provide a viable skill, as well as produce well-informed and intellectually capable citizens.  Woodshop, metalshop, automotive, home economics and various other skills are more useful than ever, by offering people the opportunity to use the capital of their arms (labor) as well as the capital of their minds. 

But the system can hardly provide for the education of the mind.  Most of its budget is absorbed by things like school lunches, providing resources for the underprivileged (whatever that means), and offering tutors and additional resources for developmentally disabled children.  We have to pause for a moment and consider the economic return these latter will offer the state.  For the millions invested in them by the state, how will the state be compensated?  It's a tough moral calculus, but one that ought to be discussed at the public level.  And while the argument for things like school lunches is valid (mostly that hungry kids don't learn as well), providing food is not really part of educating someone.  What I'm arguing is that every dollar of education should go toward shoving information into kids heads.  If it does not directly put information in their brains, then it should be cut.  That means that teachers should be experts in their fields, not experts in pedagogy.  That means miniscule administration.  That means education dollars should not be used for food, or sports, or the hundred other things to which they currently go.  And the moral calculus I described earlier needs to be seriously considered.

There are a hundred other things wrong with the system, and a number of ways that it can be fixed.  But ultimately it boils down to providing people the opportunity to better themselves, not have it "bettered" for them.  Go read Wheels of Commerce and let me know what you think.  Post your thoughts in the comments section below.